


Rapture

by Laryna6



Category: Devil May Cry
Genre: Action, F/M, Preseries, Romance
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2010-11-19
Updated: 2014-09-09
Packaged: 2017-10-13 06:52:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 6
Words: 20,956
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/134239
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Laryna6/pseuds/Laryna6
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>What could the Legendary Dark Knight have seen in a human woman? How Dante's and Vergil's parents might have gotten together and scenes from the twins' childhood. Romance, violence, and cute kids.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. First Impressions

**Author's Note:**

> Disclaimer: Don’t own DMC, or anything else mentioned in this fic. Kudos to anyone who catches the references. Something nice (suggestions welcomed) will be given to anyone who catches them all.
> 
> Notes: 3 takes place around 1991: Dante is around 18. 1 is in 2001, I’m pretty sure I saw somewhere. So, Dante and Virgil were born around 1973: Sparda died when they were young enough that Dante has no memories of him and only knows him through the stories Eva told him, so between conception and 1975 or so, and Eva died around 1981 due to the mention of 20 years in 1, Virgil running off soon after. They had been meeting to fight a long time before 3, due to Dante’s comment about how the last time he saw Virgil was a year ago and he was clearly used to being his enemy.
> 
> In the artbook, Sparda’s and Dante’s guns are inscribed: For Tony Redgrave.
> 
> We have no canon information on Eva other than that she was Sparda’s only lover, she raised Dante and Virgil after his death, she wore red and black (the photo), and Dante reveres her despite her being human.
> 
> Canon, Devils are smarter than humans. Also, given that Sparda was at least 2000 and probably more like 5 times that, he’d had a long time to acquire wisdom. So, to be able to converse with him as an equal, she had to be highly intelligent. Also, we know she was killed ‘by evil.’ It makes sense that after whatever killed Sparda, old enemies, demons and cultists alike, would come after his family. Also, she raised two boys who were certainly incredibly strong and smart without them becoming contemptuous of her: to keep them alive and to keep any authority in her house, she must have been incredibly tough.
> 
> Given that she was therefore someone tough in an era with very few woman fighters, and she had the skills to fight demons, she had to have been a demon hunter. A woman in a ‘man’s job’ in the middle of the era of feminism, dealing with men who would have wanted in her pants (she was very hot.)
> 
> Also, demon hunter isn’t something you get careers counseling about. She must have had a lot of hate to dedicate her life to killing things, even to save lives.
> 
> I was going to do research on the time, but there’s just too much. Forgive me. There’s only a little time placement. Set in 1966, upstate New York.
> 
> Oh, and in the DMC1 intro cutscene, Dante keeps the motorcycle in midair with bullets: I'd assume Sparda can do the same.
> 
> St. Lucian was a sorcerer who converted, and Jude Thaddeus was an exorcist, among other things, who became the patron of lost causes due to being confused with Judas and hence not revered: his reputation was a lost cause.

The job hadn’t started well, and it didn’t look like things were going to look up anytime soon.

First, Don Bonanno’s sleazy nephew had decided to be the one to come inform her of the job. DiGregorio knew better than to piss her off, but the Bonanno guy thinks he’s on the top of the world since he’s come back. She hoped someone’d off him soon.

Kid was high when he came in: sampling the merch. Tried to get her to take some. Like she’d hit 24 in this line of work by being stupid? Get her rep, and they start trying to take you out deliberate. Get tipsy or high and you could kiss your ass goodbye.

And she definitely wasn’t going to take anything from some punk after her ass. Standard job, standard rate. The farms and resorts back in the boonies were big business for the mob: and what with all the new cults springing up, a lot of them decided to get themselves places out in the country, near the city.

Not that she was against Wicca and the new stuff: at least it was better than Christianity, and it made it easier to get supplies, but they didn’t know anything about anything.

She’d picked up some Satanist books at the occult shop she went to for Rowan wood and so on and nearly burst a gut laughing. You had to wonder though. The truth wasn’t that hard to dig up. She’d figured out a lot of stuff just by doing research, before she’d managed to track down Redgrave and make him give her pointers.

The Sparda legend was told all over the world, like the flood myth. Sure, the only legend that actually called him a name was the Roman one, but the demon stories were ancient in the Americas way before Columbus.

Demons were real, and if you showed them a cross, they wouldn’t even know what it was, most of them.

But the books all had the Christian bullshit. Son of Morning, yadda yadda yadda. Holy water. Crosses, standing around chanting… you’d get vivisected; you stayed still for more than a second around a demon.

Now, if you mixed powered silver and iron and a few other things and magic and tossed it at them, that’d use up a lot of their healing powers. Hunters called the mix Holy Water as a joke. But calling on god did you no good at all.

But given how easy the real stories, the real rites, were to dig up, you’d think someone writing a book would give you something approaching the real scoop. Unless it was a cover up.

But given it was so easy, every so often the cults managed to call up something real, something that wasn’t interested in souls, just flesh, and laughed at their protections. So you’d get bands of rampaging demons slaughtering people. Bad for business. So she got called in.

Give her the info, give her the money, and get the hell out of the way. That was how it went. But this idiot?

Cased her joint, walked around as if he owned the place. Wanted to check out the bedroom. Like you could have a bedroom and a training room in New York. Wanted to take her out to a bar. Wanted to ‘negotiate.’ Asked to ‘see her skills’ before deciding her fee. Promised a ‘little extra.’

Didn’t even have the goddamn cash on him, when she pulled out one of her guns. Ran off threatening to tell his uncle on her, how the previous Dons had been idiots, sending a whore to do a man’s job.

Her usual guy came the night after next.

So, she got up to a resort place in the area, illegal gambling, all expense paid. She’d gone down to the bar: people who’d had encounters, seen things, usually wanted to get drunk right away and spilled things. The bartender had been told to make nice.

But she couldn’t get him alone; he kept getting dragged off to make specialty drinks. Like this one bozo with an ego the size of Manhattan who wanted his martini ‘shaken, not stirred.’ It made a difference how? She decided to win some cash and wait for things to settle down, but she ended up next to this redhead with bad teeth who wanted to ‘shag’ her. Couldn’t play cards either.

And that guy with the eye patch, the white fur muff and the redhead kept giving the two other bozos double entendres instead of playing baccarat. She tried to tell the dealer they were all palming cards, but he was took the Cyclops’s word over hers. ‘Little lady’ indeed. The Swiss gent in the out of date ensemble decided to back her up. Like she needed help.

So she went the hell with it and kidnapped the bartender.

Shit. This wasn’t a single loose Imp or something. She was going to charge extra for the bozos not telling her. Apparently the nephew had gotten yelled at for pissing her off and tried to save face by bringing up his posse.

The bodies weren’t ravaged enough, and someone had tried to make it look like an accident.

Shit.

Demons didn’t take orders unless there was one of the higher-ups involved.

Shit. Not looking good.

-

Rented a horse, grabbed a dowsing rod. The eye patch guy’s rental estate. Why was she not surprised?

Ran into the bozos hiding in the bushes. Tried to charm her. She’d had to act all demure. Which was a waste of time. Pulling a gun wasn’t. Plus, they’d tried to fight. Always a bonus.

A cultist with good enough results that the British government would send two separate ‘top agents’ after the guy. Peachy. She’d hauled them back to the resort: idiot civilians always just got in the way. Tried to act all macho, get disemboweled. Redgrave called ‘em ‘decoys,’ regular gunmen who thought they could take demons. Good word.

Gotten way too short a nap, grabbed her Chief cycle, fixed a few things. Thank goodness for her coat. Couldn’t have enough space-time pocket space. Just had to remember which finger twists got which weapons. And thank whoever for Redgrave’s instant reload spell. As long as her coat had enough ammo, she was good to go. She’d almost gotten killed tons of times early on, having to stop to reload.

-

Too late. Too fucking late. She’d gotten there too late. They always looked the same, sacrifices: standing there, grimy and bloody in white, huddling together and looking at her beseechingly with desperate hope and why did they expect her to save them? They didn’t, they shouldn’t, she couldn’t even save her own sister... And now the guy had a goddamn horde and whatever those gold thingies were were holding open a portal for his boss. Shit, shit, shit. Bangbangbangbang but they just kept coming and coming and she’d used up her holy waters, her Sapphire Orbs were mostly full from the energy they absorbed but Dark Runes never transformed the demon energy to something usable fast enough… she wasn’t going to be able to get to the bastard in time, his shields deflected her bullets and she couldn’t charge in: if they boxed her in she was dead…

“Cease this. Now.” And everything stopped.

What? The Swiss guy? Who the fuck did he think he was, standing at the edge of the clearing with his hands at his sides? He was still dressed like an old nobleman. Did he actually think he could act like a goddamn knight in shining armor? In this day and age?

“How dare you! Insolent fool, you shall be the first to perish, with the power my Master Beelzebub shall grant me for unleashing him upon this foul world!”

Typical. Monologuing. Dropped his shields. Too bad the bullet only pissed him off.

“Bring me the wench and the fool who think they can oppose me!”

Oh shit… there was, she reflected as she switched to the automatics, a big difference between being held off and them giving a damn. One of the reasons women lasted longer in this business, being underestimated. Also better leg strength and less likely to act macho and try melee combat. But there wasn’t anywhere to run…

Man, the guy could fight. Bonanno would try to gyp her if he heard about this… 45s? A Japanese sword? Doing melee… impressive. Looks like a fop, but has to have some serious muscle to be able to block blows and make much of a dent in this type’s armored hide. Who the fuck is this guy? Redgrave said there were other hunters…

And then it was over.

She released the girls, who flocked over to the guy and chattered at him. Typical. At least he was destroying the circle while basking in the glory. Well, he was hot. Just because she had to stay a virgin to do anything useful didn’t mean she couldn’t look… nice le…

Oh bloody hell.

“Run!” She fired warning shots, she couldn’t hit him, they were too close… “Get the hell away from here, all of you! It’s not over yet!”

They looked at her stupidly, still in shock. She fired again, closer to them. “Run!” This time they did, thank god. But one of them tried to cling to the demon as though he would protect her… she probably did think that… couldn’t be more than eight…

“Go on, Miss Anna.” The demon pushed her gently away. “It’s fine, go with the others and stay together. I’ll see you get home as soon as this lady and I finish up here.”

“But, Mister…” She shivered and clung tighter.

“Don’t worry. It’s perfectly all right, you’re safe now. I give you my word.” He knelt down and looked her in the eye as he said it.

“All right…” And she slowly backed away before turning and running to the other girls at the edge of the clearing.

“Good act, demon.” She held her Berettas pointed at him. “But what are you trying to act for? Your boss not friendly with this guy’s?”

He raised an eyebrow. “Well, this is an improvement.”

“What’s an improvement, bastard? And give me one good reason not to start shooting.”

“That’s the improvement. Usually Hunters I haven’t been introduced to start shooting immediately. You’re actually asking questions, and you got the young ladies out of the line of fire. Very commendable.” He bowed, clicking his heels formally.

She fired. Shit. The bullets were deflected and lodged in the barrels. These guns were out of commission, she rapidly figured out. Shit. She did the twist that was supposed to send the guns back into her coat and bring out a new pair… shit. Not working? Who was this guy?

“As for the good reason, these young ladies have had a rough night as it is. Perhaps we could get them to someplace safe before continuing this discussion.” He continued as though nothing had occurred, bowing at the end.

“Who the hell are you?”

He bowed again, clicking his heels. “Ritter Lucian Thaddeus von Schwärzung is the succinct version. I have rather an accumulation of titles. Might I ask your name, milady?”

“If you think I’m crazy enough to tell a demon my name, you’ve got another think coming, bastard.” Run? But that would involve leaving all those poor girls…

He raised an eyebrow. “As you wish. Is there anything else? Given that it is almost winter, and a storm is approaching, I would prefer if we could get the children under cover.”

He waited a second, but there was really nothing she could say. Her weapons were disabled, she couldn’t even summon items, if she had any left, she certainly didn’t have enough magic to do anything useful… and if he was pretending to be a human, he wouldn’t slaughter girls at a resort, but out in the wilderness…

Taking her silence for acquiescence, he began to walk to where the girls stood. When she didn’t follow, he turned questioningly.

“… don’t go anywhere near them.” She growled, and followed, staying well behind. Perhaps she could find a branch or something under the trees: it wouldn’t help but she refused to go down without a fight…

He sighed. “If that is what is required to avoid you attacking me in front of them and scaring them further, then as you wish, milady. I’d be happy to speak to you as soon as they are taken care of.” He turned and bowed.

“I’m not your goddamn lady.”

“Well, I do have to call you something. Is there something you would prefer?”

“I’d like you to call me your death, demon.” She growled under her breath.

He laughed for only a second. “Very well, Miss Tod.”

“What the fuck?” She snapped.

“Tod is German for death. Is it acceptable?”

“Ms. Todd to you.”

“Is it safe, Mister?” One of the girls called from the trees.

“It should be fine, Miss.” He called back. “But just in case, I’ll go on ahead to scout and Ms. Tod will stay with you. There is a hotel not that far away, I’ll see to it that you all get something to eat and we’ll call your parents. Don’t worry.”

“Thank you very much, Mister…?” She said.

“Sir Lucian.” He bowed again. “I’m glad I could be of assistance.”

The girl blushed.

What in hell was this guy?

-

He kept his word, calling the parents while she roused the staff to prepare food. She wasn’t going to let the demon anywhere near anything she and those kids were going to eat. She almost sicced the bartender on him, to keep on eye on him, but it wasn’t like it would do any good.

She kept thinking, trying to figure out what was going on.

Shadows hid, they didn’t reveal. She’d seen him walk through brush, he wasn’t as big as the shadow portrayed and he certainly didn’t have wings. Currently, anyway. So, the shadow was a deliberate illusion. Why make such a clue to his real nature if he was aping humanity?

And if that was his true form, he was a shapeshifter. Only the really powerful ones could shapeshift, and that was confirmed by how easily he had managed to deflect her bullets so precisely and lock her coat. Only she should have been able to deactivate those spells: if a demon could cut off her access to her weaponry she was screwed.

What was a demon that powerful doing on earth without an invasion force? Scouting? What was all that about titles? …she couldn’t handle this.

…she needed to use the phone.

-

“Redgrove Industries. Custom Weapon Manufacturing since 1821. How may I help you?”

“This is Eva Williams. May I please speak to Mr. Tony Redgrove Sr?”

“One second… you’re on the list. Is it urgent?” An expectant pause.

“Indubitably.”

A sigh of relief. “I’ll forward you. Please hold.” More of the cheery music.

“Redgrave Industries. Dealing death since 827. This is Wilma, whad’dya want?”

“This is a Hunter. I need to speak to the old man. It’s big.”

“He’s in the middle of a two-hour chanting session on a Sword of Paradox. It’s big enough?”

“It’s that big.”

A sigh. “Hold on a sec.”

-

Tony sighed. “Let me get this straight. Swiss, white hair, monocle, freaky shadow, saved the day?”

“…yeah.” Eva said, ticked off. What was so funny?

“I gotta go before the copper congeals. Ask to see his guns, kid. He’s legit. Buh-bye.”

“What the…” Disconnected.

She headed for the dining hall. There he was, drinking tea and nodding sympathetically. Oh, no. The demon did not just pat that girl on the shoulder. Fucking bastard. She clenched her teeth. Not here. They fought here, those kids were fodder.

He glanced up, then back down and said something to the girls, who made sounds of dismay. He bowed again, said something, then stood up and walked over to her.

“Would you like to have that conversation now, Ms. Tod? I’m quite willing, but I would prefer that we have it someplace private, preferably out of earshot if you wish me to unlock your weaponry.”

“You’d better believe I want my weapons back, demon. And until I get them, I want yours.”

He sighed. “The Yamato is… temperamental. It would not be safe. And Lux and Umbra wouldn’t work for you, but you may have them if it would make you feel better.” He gestured, and two guns appeared as they walked out the glass doors of the dining room. He handed them over at her nod.

“…For Tony Redgrave?! What the hell?!” She yelled, stopping.

He perked up. “Oh. Do you know him? Well, not him, he’s passed on, but his son?”

“Who. The. Hell. Are. You.” She said quietly and sternly, keeping from growling by sheer force of will. “And none of that Sir Lucifer crap.”

“Well… my actual name can’t be heard by human ears, and it doesn’t translate very well…” He half laughed, half sighed. Then he shrugged. “The first name I was given by humans was Dux Atrum, the Dark Commander, approximately. When I was asked what I wanted to be called…” He turned and started walking fast, saying over his shoulder, “Let’s get a little farther, shall we?”

“Tell me now.” She said, hurrying to catch up.

…’Dark General?’ Why did that sound familiar? There was a black horseman in the book of Revelations, but she refused to believe the bible got anything right…

“This should be far enough.” He stopped. The resort was hidden behind a ridge. He sighed. “You’re probably not going to believe this…”

“I don’t believe any of this. A demon, looking after little girls? Fighting his own kind? Who’s ever heard of such a…” She froze.

“Ah.” He laughed. “Indeed. Rather like a wolf being a vegetarian, isn’t it?”

“But… he became human, didn’t he? He died a long time ago! You can’t be… it’s gotta be some kind of…”

“Oh, the legend. Legends are stories, Ms.Tod. They survive by being told, and after a while no one believes them, and if it is just a story, than it can be altered as one pleases. Bards needed to eat too, you realize. Did you know that the character of Sir Lancelot was made up out of whole cloth after the Norman Invasion, to suit the new ruling class? In the earlier version, Artos’ wife had nothing to do with his downfall, well, except for not being able to give him a heir. It’s rather a shame, the poor woman being vilified for a medical condition, don’t you agree?”

“Male chauvinist pigs.” She said automatically, her mind a million miles away. And two thousand years.

“Your coat has been fixed. Might I have my guns back?” He said, trying to change the subject.

“Say it.”

“Well… you’ve guessed… Sparda. It’s rather a pun,” he said to fill the ensuing silence. “Espada for one of the dialects’ word for sword; Sparta for a city of cruel warriors; Spadus, meaning eunuch, a ‘man that is not a man’…”

“Spartacus.”

“Well, you weren’t all completely enslaved…”

“The Legendary Dark Knight. There was a movie. An old black and white one. I saw it several times. There was a woman, and they got married, and he gave up his powers to became human and ruled…”

“Well, it doesn’t make much sense to save people from being conquered just to take them over yourself, does it? And there was a senior Vestal Virgin who helped me with a certain seal, but she was chaste. Hence the virgin part. And, well… they’d just fought a rather long and bloody war with my kind. They were grateful, but… there were few who hadn’t lost family… and if I lost my powers, the seal I set that makes it quite difficult for my kind to enter this world without human aid would collapse…I say, are you all right?”

“I’m fine.”

“No, you’re much too pale… oh dear. Here.” He held out a thermos. “Don’t worry, it’s just tea. How long has it been since you’ve eaten? And that was a rather difficult battle for you, I’m sorry I took so long, I had been trying to seal the portal with magic before starting a battle, and you were doing rather well up till that point…”

“You have tea?”

“I find it helps calm people down. It is rather a symbol of comfort and rationality, hot tea, don’t you agree?”

“…Yes.”

“I find it does help people.”

“Yes, I really shouldn’t have taken this job.”

“Well, in an ideal world none of this would be necessary… I really do hope they come to their senses. Going down in history is all well and good, but not enough to justify subjugating an entire race… You really would feel better if you drank the tea.”

“I’m not drinking anything that has been anywhere near a demon.”

“…Probably a wise policy. And it’s devil, actually.”

“…Just give me the tea.”

“You’re welcome.” He smiled.


	2. Conservation

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Disclaimer: Don’t own DMC. If I did, Eva would be the unlockable in 3, like Sparda in 1 and Trish in 2.
> 
> Well, my original Eva back-story was that she was captured for use as a human sacrifice, her family getting killed in the process, and she was rescued by a Hunter who averted the ceremony and placed her with a foster family. She was originally English. She was originally supposed to be more trigger-happy, ala Mary Arkham.
> 
> Guns are very persuasive. The thing about Eva is that she really does write herself. My original conception of her was that she did world-saveage and had a magic-using partner to compensate for not having the strength Dante does, to fight devils solo. However, she turned down the whole partner thing and insisted on a huge aversion to world-savage. She knows when she’s not in her league. Don’t talk to her about Mary: she is firmly of the opinion that only she is allowed to shoot her family.
> 
> Frankly, I can’t see Eva and Sparda as love at first sight. They’re both pretty much people, especially him in canon, who have by now placed the subject of marriage in the not for me category: he’s a devil among humans who he has very little in common with…
> 
> I see them as getting closer until at one point while they’re going about their businesses they keep thinking about each other until they suddenly realize, “I’m in love with him/her. Wait, WHEN DID THAT HAPPEN?!”
> 
> Both Sparda’s and Dante’s guns are dedicated For Tony Redgrave: here Tony is the traditional name for the eldest son. There’s the Tony who showed Sparda how to forge Lux and Umbra, Tony Sr. from First Impressions who trained Eva, Tony Jr. who trained Dante and is in Where You Are as just Tony Redgrave and is the old guy with the cig in the artbook, and ‘Tonto,’ who is the Tony of Dante’s generation and the one who was almost Dante’s partner along with Aisha, because an old guy wouldn’t have lasted 5 seconds.
> 
> This fic plays around a lot with the various meanings and permutations of the word courtesy. And date.
> 
> Morgan is ‘of the sea,’ George is ‘farmer,’ Sarah is ‘princess,’ Dolores is ‘Lady of sorrows,’ Toby is ‘The Lord is good,’ Gabriel ‘Hero of God,’
> 
> Earl is derived from a word for elf.
> 
> There is, IRL, a bank in Germany named Sparda.
> 
> Oh, and this is The Four Seasons Restaurant, not hotel. Founded 1959.

The meeting was over. The rulers of the financial world got up from around the circular table and engaged in small talk about the various presidential appointments: which would get past the Senate.

George Morgan noticed one of the foreigners heading for the door. Who was it? Oh yes. Sir Lucian. One of the Swiss banks, the ‘Sparda’ one… Odd get-up. Really, some of the Europeans just hadn’t grasped that the days of the nobleman were over. Velvet and brocade yet. Far too old-fashioned. Even a monocle. Pity, he seemed like a sharp type otherwise. Had only spoken up twice, but both times it was to say something that everyone had to pause a second to think about. Had a reputation as a sleeping giant: played ball unless someone contravened his principles: very good at handling governments: essential with Europe still recovering…

He smoothed his silk shirt and adjusted his designer glasses, and moved over to intercept him. The fellow noticed his approach and turned to greet him.

“Mr. Morgan.” von Schwärzung bowed to him. No reason to take those titles seriously. It wasn’t like they meant anything nowadays. The fellow hadn’t insisted on them. “My condolences on the death of your wife.”

How had he…? The question must have shown on his face, for the fellow continued, “She had some overseas accounts with us, so we received the death notice. I made sure personally that they were transferred to your control to be held in trust for your children, as per her instructions. The paperwork was completed on the second.”

Children… “My wife and I have… had only one child. But thank you very much for the help: what with all the new financial rigamarole, having to cross the Ts and dot the Is, it was very kind of you.”

“No trouble at all.” He bowed in that ostentatiously old-fashioned way, heels clicking. Almost a military bearing. But real sympathy, underneath the composed shell. “But I thought you had had three? I’ve received three invitations from you, several years ago, although I was unable to attend, Switzerland being isolated by the war…”

“Our daughters… there was a tragedy several years ago, and our eldest, Sarah died. Dolores never recovered… we still have our son, Toby, however. He’s a great, great comfort to us.”

“I’m terribly sorry to bring it up. You have my deepest respect, for holding up so well under the circumstances.” He bowed again, this time with an element of true deference instead of mere formality. “It’s always difficult to lose people.” His eyes were sympathetic.

Of course… Switzerland had been neutral, but even so they’d been surrounded by the war… the Swiss were fellow mongrels, weren’t they? French and German and a bit of Italian… Lucian was… mid-fifties, wasn’t he? It was hard to tell, but he was sure he remembered, you had to respect your fellows enough to keep track of who they were. Predators in this business. Both world wars… what an era they lived in. No wonder the bright kids were all going insane with all their drugs and so on…

“Here,” Morgan said, “Do you want to go out for a drink right now?”

“I’m sorry,” and he truly was sorry, Morgan could tell. The guy was really winning him over, it was rare that people were this nice and meant it. “But I have a previous engagement at… oh my. I’d better hurry, it’s almost 4. But I should be free tomorrow…?”

“I’m going to have to make arrangements tomorrow.” Morgan sighed.

“One moment…” Lucian looked in his pockets. “Ah. Here’s my card, it has where I’m staying while I’m in New York, feel free to call at any time, and I’d be honored to be invited to the funeral. If I can be of any assistance whatsoever, don’t hesitate to call.” He bowed again, trying not to glance at the door. “I’m dreadfully sorry, but…”

“Go ahead. I really appreciate you taking the time to chat with me when you’re in such a hurry.”

“Oh, I’ll be fine. I detest being late, so I always schedule more than enough time for situations like these… it’s just in the restaurant downstairs.” Lucian shrugged it off.

“Oh? Then might I accompany you?” This formal stuff was contagious.

A slight smile. “I’m terribly sorry, but it’s with a young lady, and it would be rather awkward…”

Morgan laughed. So the guy was human after all.

XOXO

“So, you’re just looking me up for no real reason?”

That same little one-second laugh. “Does anyone ever do anything for no reason whatsoever? I wanted to talk to you again for several, Ms. Tod.”

“Call me Eva. If you managed to track me down, you at least know that much.” She looked around. The Four Seasons Restaurant. Hadn’t been here in…

Classy place, but he was paying for it. Was it usually open for tea? She sipped her water.

He laughed again. She raised her eyebrow. “Huh?”

“That was rather clever of you. When we met before?” He prompted.

She snorted. “You figured it out?”

“Well, going from quite reasonable distrust to acquiescence so quickly… it was rather obvious, actually. Not that you’re a bad actor, but, well, I do have a lot of experience at reading people.” He shrugged.

“Well, you’d pretty well demonstrated there wasn’t anything I could do to stop you doing anything you felt like doing, so I figured…” She shrugged back, smiling.

“You figured that you’d give me the opportunity to poison you if I wanted to take you out quietly: if you stayed alive and in control of yourself, you would be able to quit worrying quite so much?”

“I still don’t trust you trust you, though.” She smiled. It was nice not to be underestimated for once, although she’d hoped that perhaps he would be convinced she had just given up on thinking for the day… but hadn’t really expected it.

“Quite reasonable. And it was very well done, Ms. Williams.” He bowed his head in acknowledgement.

The waiter appeared silently, but they both were well aware of their surroundings. Sparda inclined his head, indicating she could order first. The chair legs and the tables hid his shadow, but she knew what was there. “Coffee.” She said abruptly to the waiter. This place… being around someone seemingly so naturally courteous, and not the piss-someone-off and die courtesy of the mob, but then the old nobility had had power as well, hadn’t they?

It was taking an effort not to fall into old habits.

“And could I have Earl Grey tea, perhaps?” Sparda smiled at the waiter. Well done. Very well done. Made him forget her rudeness instead of calling attention to it by comparison.

Well, like he’d said. He’d had a lot of practice. She had to be careful.

“Doesn’t it,” She waved her hand, “get kind of old, being so… isn’t it a strain?”

“Well,” he (it?) said, steepeling his hands, “I’m rather used to it. Warrior cultures and cultures in which it’s hard to get away from people often have to develop elaborate rituals to avoid giving offence as a practical matter: we are no different. Look at England and Japan for instance.”

“Islands… so it’s hard to avoid people, getting in each other’s space? But I thought he…” She stopped herself. “Where you’re from was… rather large?”

He nodded. “One can create as large a domain as one likes: the issue is more one of time than space. It’s a wise thing to avoid making enemies whom one is going to have to deal with for a long time, Ms. Williams.”

Her eyes narrowed. “I told you to call me Eva. So you did do background research on me? Tony seemed rather friendly with you…”

He shook his head. “I once had occasion to be of some assistance to one of his ancestors: as the boy had no where else to go I had him placed afterwards with a foster family on one of my estates. He later prevailed on me to teach him to be a hunter by stating he would do so one day even without my instruction… I’ve kept up with them since, but most hunters are much less… by acting as trainers and weapons makers the Redgraves save many lives. If they were known to be allied to me, it would cripple them. So I seek their aid as little as possible. Asking them to turn over information on a hunter…” He shrugged.

“So how did you know?”

“Well, I do try to keep track of where there are competent hunters… I don’t require money for my work, and it would be ill of me to deny them opportunities to use their skills and support themselves… I feel that humanity should be capable of defending itself, and hindering the development of its ability to do so would serve it ill, don’t you agree?”

“That’s very kind of you, Sp… what should I call you? I can’t call you that in public.”

“I go by Ritter Lucian Thaddeus von Schwärzung. You may call me anything you like, Ms. Williams.”

“Ritter means knight, right? You said estates just now, and you mentioned you had a bunch of titles that time? How’d you get them?”

“Well, a lot of them are just formalities, given for services to various crowns of the saving their kingdoms variety: a few came with lands attached. It would have caused them to be offended and worried if I had turned them down, and once I had them…” He shrugged. “I had to play the part, to look after the people.”

“Apparently you’ve done rather well for yourself.” She prodded.

“Rent money does rather seem to accumulate over time when one doesn’t do much but reinvest it in the farmers. I gave some of it to Johann… a member of another one of the families I seem to have accumulated, to found a bank to give out affordable loans and invest money for people in 1672… he named it Sparda, which is rather embarrassing, but it’s managed to acquire a bit of a reputation, so it wouldn’t be prudent to change the name…” He shrugged sheepishly.

“I suppose if you’re around for long enough… how old are you?”

“Well, I’ve spent coming up on 1973 years on earth, and what I think works out to around 6000 in what you call hell: we’re not very precise about timekeeping, as it is possible to make time run at different speeds in different domains.”

“What do you call it?” She asked.

He laughed. “Curious, aren’t we?”

She raised an eyebrow. “Most demons don’t talk, and I’ve never been around one who wasn’t trying to kill me.”

“Know thy enemy? Indeed. Well…” He stopped as the waiter came within earshot.

“Here you go, Sir, Madam.” He filled the fine china cups already on the table with hot water and coffee respectively, then left the teapot and carafe along with several tea bags, cream, sugar and lemon slices.

“Thank you.” Spa… von shwars… Lucian said, bowing his head just slightly enough to indicate gratitude without it being awkward for a ‘servant.’

“You’re welcome.” The waiter bowed and left.

Lucian put the tea bag in to steep. “It’s rather hard to translate between our ‘languages’…” He could put quotes around something.

The waiter had come back with a tray of biscuits, cakes, those ridiculous sandwiches… “Compliments of the house, Sir.” He said, putting plates in front of them.

“Very kind of you. Please, give the manager my thanks. However…” He shrugged apologetically.

The waiter looked at her and back to Lucian. “Yes, sir. Have a pleasant time.” He bowed and left.

She looked around. There was no one else there, she’d been aware for a while. Dinner for those who patronized this place didn’t start until 8 at the earliest… Lucian could have this place be open just for them to have tea? What message was he sending with that? She sipped her coffee.

Lucian selected a modest amount of the dainties. He liked chocolate?

Well… power, certainly. Wealth and influence. He was in New York negotiating something financial… Really, this thing was so ceremonial. So ostentatiously civilized. He knew how to read people, he knew the she would be able to interpret all the little things he was doing…

“Your father is holding up rather well, I think you’ll be pleased to know.” He said quietly, stirring two sugars into a cup of rather dark tea.

She took another sip of the coffee. The éclairs looked good…

“Soft shadow… enfolding dark… warm stability… cool slumber… this place still seems harsh and glaring, sometimes. So chaotic, so changing, one year’s modernity another’s ancient history. A line, but not a straight and narrow one, heading this direction then another, chasing its tail or going in a seemingly new direction altogether. None of the cycles, traditions overthrown… you have so little time. You are so rarely remembered. To have what you have cut shor…”

“Pass me the cream.”

He handed it over. She stirred half of it in, and topped off the cup.

“You feel alike.”

“We’re nothing alike. Pass the sugar.”

It was in her hand as soon as the word left her lips. “He did love her, you know.”

“It was a marriage of convenience.” One scoop with the little silver spoon.

“Why else look so long to find her?” Not falling for it. They weren’t talking about her mother. Another scoop, and stir.

“They didn’t find her.” Making a little ringing noise.

“They found the others, the hunters he hired. He brought home her shell to be honored.”

The coffee was occasionally coming over the rim of the cup. “He didn’t let me look.”

“It was too late the day she disappeared.” He sighed.

“Because she got engaged to Gabriel. Because she wasn’t a virgin. Three of them, tossed to rot in the forest.” Her sister, left to die after the bastards had...

“I’m…”

She said quietly. “Did you do it. Did you organize that cult.”

“No.”

She finally met his gaze. “Then don’t you dare say you’re sorry. It’s meaningless.”

“It’s never meaningless.” He drank some of the tea. “I’m sorry. I sorrow. Thank you. I am thankful to you. Goodbye. God be with you. Language is so imprecise, compared to thought. They say it’s the thought that counts, and for my kind it is, but how can anything matter if it is not known?”

“God?” She laughed.

“If ‘devils’ exist…” He shrugged.

“I hope God doesn’t exist. Because if he does, I’d have to kill him.” She was quiet now. The mini-cheesecakes were good.

“Ultimate truth… do you know, quite often,” he made the point with his teacup, “the only way to tell the truth is to lie?”

“How so?” She had a pretty good idea.

“This form I take, these mannerisms… my kind take whatever form is suitable for the circumstances. You are born in bodies that have nothing to do with your selves. To express yourselves, you must hide the reality of your body with clothing and makeup, among other things. You develop little artificial rituals to tell each other, yes, I am one of you, I am not the other, I am not the enemy, when you are all people, and you are all individuals. So, to express the truth about myself, I must wear a mask, I must speak a foreign language, I must use as set of mannerisms not native to my species, to express the truth: that I am well disposed towards you.”

“You know, these dried fruit things are good.”

“Have you tried the fudge? Apparently it’s good with coffee.”

“When did you get here?”

“It works out to January 7th, the year 5 BC.”

“To New York.”

“Last month. Why?”

“Ah, now you’re asking questions. It must be quite rare for you to not know something.”

“There are a lot of things I don’t know. I wanted to meet with you to find some of them out, but you’ve been quite good at deflecting the discussion.”

“Ask away then. I want to pay for this somehow.” She said with her mouth slightly full.

“You don’t want to be beholden to me?”

“I hate being beholden to people, but this won’t balance the scales any.”

He cocked his head. His eyes… she wondered if it was deliberate. Hellspawn’s eyes were ornamental, they didn’t use light to see, she’d found out when she tried to toss paint on them in one of her first fights. Before she’d tracked down Redgrave. The payment had been dated April second. The rescued sacrifices had arrived the day before. She’d been so certain her sister… she was a fool.

Either she’d been misreading him, and how could she know she was? Everything he did was artificial.

But the root of artifice is art, and an artist always ends up putting in more than they know.

Was no one ever grateful to him? Well, the Redgraves, but he was right. They did have to hide it. If there were families he protected, who grew up knowing him, were they the only ones he could show a lie one shade closer to the truth?

To watch people grow old and die, always moving so people wouldn’t be able to notice you never died, living in exile away from everyone who knew you, everyone who was capable of knowing you…

“It’s quite all right.” He smiled wryly, trying to cover up that slight tinge of sadness in his eyes.

“So, what do you want to know?”

He laughed. “Everything. But on a practical level… I’m trying to gather information about the recent level of demonic activity, there are a couple things that don’t seem quite right: the Redgraves and others I know haven’t noticed anything, but I think perhaps they, mostly being coordinators, and having seen the records, have access to a little too much information. I wanted to see what feel someone who knew only the basics, an ‘average foot soldier,’ if you will, was getting, and since you’re well above average and willing to talk to me…” He shrugged.

“How recent?” She asked.

“I’m not quite sure. I first got a feeling something was slightly off while I was in Africa a few months ago…”

Really. This was rather jarring. Here she was, talking. She never talked to anyone. And he was um-huming and nodding and asking little questions that either made her notice something she would never have thought to notice or were obviously enough wrong that they made her organize her thoughts about what was right.

Here she was talking with a devil. The enemies of humanity. The beings her sister hadn’t made the cut to be food too. He’d saved the world. He could have sold us out at any time. He still could. It could all be some maniacal plan. It’s not paranoia… but was this one out to get her?

It was… interesting, to ‘talk shop.’ Demon hunters tended to get defensive of their ‘territories,’ fanatical about working out their own personal vengeances, resentful of anyone who told them they couldn’t save them all…

She knew she couldn’t. They did too. But at least she could admit to herself that she was just a woman with a few tricks, a few spells, a few blue orbs. Fight off a horde? Yeah. Right.

She tried to avoid, tried to nip in the bud, the high-profile stuff. Yet, it’d come close a few times.

And she knew she was good. Of course, all fighter pilots said they were the best too. If you weren’t the best, you died. And a lot of them did. Because they were stronger, faster, even smarter in a limited way, even the cannon fodder.

It just… good triumphed a little too often, she knew, for what she knew. Barring divine intervention… perhaps it was devilish.

Perhaps it was this… man, in front of her, with the preoccupied, eccentric, old-fashioned air of quiet competence and authority.

Not hiding the fact the he could probably kill you in several thousand ways in a second, but making it so that it was dismissed before it was even thought. Not hiding his nature, his shadowed past that followed him everywhere, just showing you, telling you, in a hundred little ways, in every aspect of his crafted self, that it wasn’t important to you, because you had nothing to fear.

Power shown not by feverish following of the moment, but in security: an immovable object, not an unstoppable force.

A seal, a shield, the legend said he had created with his sword.

A devil fighting to protect the peace of humanity.

Really. Truth was stranger than fiction. Speaking of which…

“So, what did you think of the movie they did of the legend?”


	3. Samaritan

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Disclaimer: Don’t own DMC. Don’t own the number 1 bestseller of all time, although I’m working on it.
> 
> The Parable of the Good Samaritan, FYI, is a story told by Jesus about a man who gets robbed and left for dead on the roadside. A tax collector (a good citizen, theoretically) sees him and ignores him, a Pharisee (a kind of holy man, usually depicted in the bible as actually corrupt) ignores him, the one who goes to a lot of trouble and expense to help him is a Samaritan, who is a member of an ethnic group that converted to Judaism and were considered inferior by the ‘real’ Jews. The moral of the story is don’t be racist.
> 
> The Book of Revelations, incidentally, wasn’t written to be taken literally: Apocalyptic literature was a genre back then. Think Aesop’s fables. Moral instruction.
> 
> Heresy is fun, isn’t it?
> 
> And now on to the actual fic.

Some days, she really has to wonder why she even bothers. There are these people she’d heard about, Social Darwinists, who think that people should be left to survive on their own, cultures too. That if they die, they die, the weak are culled and the species is stronger for it. Or, they manage to survive and quit being weak and stupid like they would if you kept helping them out. All according to nature’s plan.

Some days, she just wants to bang her head against the wall, because they’re just so damn stupid. Of course, she tells herself, they don’t know any better.

Some days she thinks they should let them know better. Quit it with this whole conspiracy, nuclear raid drills and evacuation tests and escaped Zoo animals, and just let people know what’s out there. Let the government spend its time on the real threats instead of bombing people trying to free their country because they’ve got the wrong ideology.

Those aren’t the days like today, when she gets a call from a frightened kid who got grabbed by one of the enspelled flyers she put on college campuses (‘Supernatural Specialist, 1000 an hour,’ which was high enough to turn off the dabblers and the phone number wasn’t correct unless you were full of fear) to attract kids with a trace of the right stuff on them. When she gets a frantic call from someone stammering so badly over a malfunctioning payphone she can’t even get the address off him and has to use a dowsing crystal to get the place.

When she meets at the corner an ordinary kid, like you wouldn’t give a second glance on a college campus. Would have run right past him if he hadn’t been standing under the one working streetlight. Blood glistened like an oil slick far longer than it should. Brown hair, blue jeans… a kid whose fraternity tried a demonic ritual for kicks. Play ‘Satinists,’ got a high girl to play ‘nekkid vergin sacrifice’, although probably no higher than the rest of them… beer bottles everywhere. Some of them had tried to use them for weapons: a couple of them had had knives, one antique hunting rifle. This was a rough neighborhood, after all.

Only one of the neighbors had tried to help when they heard the screams. The screams still going on when she arrived. Fifty-something black guy, probably a WWII vet.

Thank go… whatever this was New York, the city where people walked right by a mugging. Redgrave’d told her about small towns. The kind where people didn’t lock their doors, the kind where people grabbed their guns and turned out to help their neighbors. The kind doomed to poverty because all the able-bodied workers were dead.

Some guy’d said Hell was empty, and all the demons are here. Just one, thank god. Here, anyway.

One of the medium ones. Black cloak, scythe. Couldn’t spot which type off the top off her head, but the Devils made new servants a lot… it wasn’t immune to bullets and the whole thing could take damage, not like those annoying ones where you had to hit the head or you’d just wasted a bullet. Easy money.

The highest ranking fraternity officer left, the Under-Treasurer or something had pressed the cash box with all their dues into her hands, and the five left alive and conscious had given her all the cash they had.

Apparently it’d left the ones in a closet alone while it ate the ten it had disabled right off the bat. Ate them slowly, to prolong the fear and pain, chased another through the house... It had wanted them to listen, wanted them to hear.

They didn’t leave bodies. That was an odd thing to make her lose her cool, when it was all over and she was out of earshot. No body.

On the one hand, it made clean-up easier. No traces, no way to prove it wasn’t a human. But the thing was, if there was a body, they would have had something resembling a sense of closure. They could have burnt it, or dismembered it. They could have gotten some sort of vengeance. They’d be looking out behind them all their lives. They’d always be frightened of the dark, and no psychiatrist would be able to come up with an easy cure. They wouldn’t even be able to tell anyone. Not without being locked up. In an enclosed space. Easy prey.

Easy prey like the bodies on the floor, the scents of blood and shit and fear so strong she was sure she could smell it like a demon could.

And that’s what they’d be for the rest of their lives. Prey, who knew man wasn’t the top of the food chain. Scared little mice, because they got drunk one day and decided to try something out of a book one had brought to ‘investigate the supernatural’ and done it wrong enough it was right.

So goddamned stupid. There were some corners you just shouldn’t shine light into.

And in the end, she knew, that was really why they fought.

She had six blue orbs. She’d gotten two from Redgrave, starting out: she’d had to give them back for the next hunter when she got her own. She also had potions and things, but those required doing the finger twists to grab them for her coat, and then opening the top and drinking them. This required stopping shooting to leave her hands free. Which was not on option, indoors with no room to maneuver, or they’d be on you in a second.

She’d been down to two orbs at one point, until the Runes had managed to transform enough of the energy they gave off when injured into enough to activate one of the healing set spells she’d had ready to go.

And then, of course, it had only seemed like an instant until she’d taken it out, and the green lights of its victims’ souls had clustered around her, wanting to offer her their last bits of life, and she hadn’t had any place to put most of it.

Sucked to have free healing energy and have to let it go to waste.

Anyways, she was going to buy it. Long term planning for a Hunter was getting a magazine subscription. She was gonna buy it. And Redgrave’d remember her, and there’d be some record book with her training, her reports, that some day someone else who was gonna die soon would leaf through frantically, as she’d done, trying to find some vital bit of information.

She was gonna buy it. Probably doing something stupidly heroic. And no one would ever really know. She’d just be one more faceless Hunter who had hopefully been just good enough. And Hunters didn’t have time for history.

And no one in the real world would have any idea.

These are the days, when she looks into the eyes of people who have seen just a little too much, that she realizes she’d okay with this. That all the lies, all the deception, all the lack of recognition is damn well worth it.

They die. They die and normal life goes on. They die and no one remembers. They die and no one knows the battles they fought, the sacrifices they made, the terrors they knew.

And this is their triumph.

That idiots can think they’re kings of the world, that what color is in, what musician is hottest, what’s going on in some little country on the other side of the world matters in the slightest.

That everyone, everywhere, doesn’t have the look in their eyes that these kids (was she ever so young?) do.

Because of her, these kids are alive. And people are sleeping soundly not a block from here.

Screw it, anyways. A body’d be evidence. Proof it was real. They’ll convince themselves it was a bad trip, a dream, a mass hallucination, whatever. Just a dream.

Just a nightmare.

Huh. Guess that’d make her the alarm clock.

She was still pissed though.

Of course, alarm clocks often got whacked at.

She’d just gotten back ‘home’ around 2: your stereotypical midnight ritual. Friday night was busy: she’d wanted to check her equipment. Fortunately, the spells on her coat kept it clean. She wished everything was that easy to get blood out of…

…aaaand ran into the welcoming committee. Fortunately she’d recognized the creep just before she fired.

Whatever happened to early to bed, early to rise, and all that shit?

Pastor Theophilus J. Flocker. Proprietor of the storefront church three places to the left of her home/office in the strip mall, on the bottom floor.

Right across from the stripper joint. Why oh why couldn’t he go bother them?

In retrospect, having a pentacle (right side up, thank you) on her sign in red neon was kinda asking for it, religious idiot-wise. But she’d set up first, damnit!

“Wergild” didn’t seem so cool a name now that she’d used it for her shop for a few years, but apparently it was bad luck to change it.

It was kinda weird to encounter rampant superstition among people who knew how it really worked, but on the other hand, no Atheists in foxholes.

Pretty, though. She liked the color. War and courage and all that. And you can’t bleed if you’re dead. Neon is basically chemicals in tubes with electric charges. What blood is, come to think of it.

And no, she wasn’t paying attention. Tuning out unimportant conversations is a vital social skill, at least when she was growing up…

Bitch, please. Not witch. She’d like to believe in Wicca. She’d like to have some faith: a lot of demon hunters did have something to believe in, even Christians among them yet.

End times? Not on her watch.

Demon worshipper? Thank you, oh non-existent god, for the stupidity of thy sheep. She needed a good laugh.

Ah, the persuasive power of the sub-machinegun. Why yes, she was violent, thank you. Really, a self-proclaimed ‘warrior for God’, scared off by her just drawing back her coat enough to expose the holsters?

Allowed himself to be dragged off by his adoring public. She hadn’t seen those two before: probably showing off his faith, facing down the local Jezebel.

Better get in, get to the phone.

No, this was not Bernie’s Deli. Bernie’s Deli’s number was -2668. This was -2666.

…and now she wanted a BLT. Of course, after the first few times delivery boys walk in during payment negotiating sessions with mob bosses, get accosted by religious nutjobs, or get sliced at by weird things, word gets around. No one was going to deliver to this block until dawn.

Let’s see. She had… mayo, half a head of lettuce… Damn, she needed to go shopping. It’d been an hour, and all she’d been doing was sitting around and wiring C4 blocks, no real calls… what were the odds somebody’d have a close encounter of the 6th kind in the 10 minutes it’d take to get there, get Bernie to slap something together for his favorite customer, and run back?

…practically certain.

Her stomach rumbled.

After she’d vaulted off the railing lining the walkway in front of the second floor shops down to street level, she did a cartwheel for the hell of it. Didn’t have anything if you didn’t have style. And she needed to loosen up after bending over teeny wires for over an hour.

Also, if you acted like you were nuts, they thought you were. Always good to be underestimated. Even better to be simultaneously over and underestimated. She idly did the spinney thing with a couple of her handguns as she took the shortcut through the alley.

She munched on her sandwich as she walked back. And stopped. And stared. And dropped her jaw and her sandwich… shit! That had been a good sandwich!

And did the finger twist that called out her guns and ran towards the burning strip mall. She was going to find out what idiot had been playing with matches and leave them dangling off a skyscraper! She still hadn’t managed to replace all her office furniture since that two-bit sorcerer had sent demons he managed to control to steal her spell components!

People were rushing about in a panic. Screams, shouts, hysterical laughter… wait a minnit. She knew maniacal laughter when she heard it.

Well, this really took the fruitcake.

Panicked mob. She fucking hated panicking mobs. Blocking each others’ escape routes, crushing people in panic, pushing others towards the blades to survive… getting in her way. Unforgivable. She fired her gun in the air for attention. ...funny, she thought she hadn’t loaded it with flare bullets… and her silencer must be busted.

Well, it got their attention. Silence, but for the crackling flames. And the roaring.

“Welcome to the First Annual Manhattan Marathon!” she chirped brightly. “Participants will receive the opportunity of a lifetime! Follow Broad Way towards Glen Avenue,” she pointed as they stared, “For a chance at surviving the night!” She held up her gun. “On your mark, get set, go!” She fired in the air again.

There they go.

Now.

“There’s nowhere to run, sinners! Now that the demons have descended upon earth again, the great Babylon will be destroyed and Christ will come to judge you all as the Book of Revelations foretold! Though I have condemned my soul to hell by trafficking with fiends, I will be found worthy on Judgment day, for I have brought hell to earth in the name of god!”

What. The. Fuck?! She stared.

Flocker continued to preach to his one remaining listener. Well, except for the demons stalking toward her. “According to God’s divine plan, the Judgment Day was intended to come within the lifetime of his Son’s disciples. For so it was foretold, that when Earth was shrouded in darkness and the sins of man had brought the untold torment of hell upon them, the Christ would descend upon this vale of tears, and the good would ascend to heaven and the evil would have plague upon plague visited upon them! And then, the end of days would come and all evil, even hell itself would be destroyed by the power of God! But one of the devils realized God’s plan, and before it could be brought to fruition…”

She flicked the switch and threw it, taking out the demon that had stalked closest.

Boom.

“Though I walk through the alley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for I am the wickedest bitch in the alley!” She chanted. She tossed another bomb in her hand. “I’ll let you finish your speech, Bastard, as they’re your last freaking words!”

“See!” He shouted at the sky, wild-eyed and frothing at the mouth. “Corrupt is this world, that a woman can ape the ways of man! This infamy should never have come to pass! Forgive us, oh Lord! Forgive your children for living past your intended time of destruction! Forgive us for counting a devil as our savior against the forces of Hell, when only your son is our true, divine savior! Only he can rescue us from the darkness we are ensnared in! Let him descend upon us a second time now, as he should have 2 millennia ago, and visit upon Earth his wrath!”

BOOM.

…shit. The fire must have spread to the explosives in her office.

…shit. She needed a new office.

…shit. She wasn’t going to get to have the nutcase burned at the stake.

On the plus side, at least some of the demons had been far away enough from the fire to survive. She put the other bomb away with a flick and with another twist held her semi-automatics.

She beckoned them toward her tauntingly. “Come and get me, boys.”

Well, that was fun. But her smile disappeared as she dug through the rubble.

Amanda. She didn’t know her last name. She didn’t know any of their last names. She only knew a few of their first names. She’d only been in the strip club one time when there’d been a ruckus while she was passing, one of the patrons trying to haul off one of them without payment.

Amanda had been the one to come up, about a month or so after she’d moved in, and ask about the sign. Ask if she was a witch. She’d raised an eyebrow and asked why.

Back in the middle ages, the big beef men had about witches was they could make people barren.

It wasn’t that much of a hassle to make more of the tea she used to keep her period regular. Of course, after a while, if you exercised with the fanaticism a hunter had to, you went a long time in between periods. But she couldn’t afford to smell of blood on a mission.

And now Amanda wasn’t going to have to worry about an unwanted child ever again.

…and now the firefighters arrived. She nodded to the chief, who looked like he didn’t know to give her a medal or hang her. She was tempted to say something along the lines of, we must stop meeting like this, but bit it back. No point in acting to him, he knew the score.

He’d smelt burnt human flesh and hair before.

She tossed what she could salvage in the pockets in her coat. …had to be careful, crystal ball shards all over here, and she didn’t envy the clean-up crew. She should probably give the firefighters a list… bomb-making required a bunch of nasty chemicals, not to mention potion ingredients…

She yawned, looking up at the sky. Morning, already? She needed a place to crash…

She started towards this little rattrap that the guy who ran it owed her big, and

Ohshitohshitohshitandithurtandwhyhadn’tsherealizedthatwithherofficedestroyedtherewentthespellthathidwhereshewasandhowhadtheygottensocloseandithurtandshecouldn’tmoveandtheGoldenOrbsbroughtherbacktolifestilltrappedandsheonlyhad5left4leftherhandwastoodamagedtogetagun3leftcouldn’tscream2leftshedidn’twanttodielikethis1leftI’msorrySarahit’sallgoingdark…

\- - - - - -

There was a hesitant knock on the door. Delores Morgan rolled over in bed and moaned, “I’ll be down for breakfast in five minutes, Sadie, I promise.” Then she promptly stuck her head back under the silk pillows and groaned. “It’s too early to be this early…”

Another knock. “Ms. Williams?” a male voice said worriedly. “It’s seven o’clock in the evening. Your gentleman friend said you wished to be roused for dinner at this hour?”

Delo… Eva Williams threw herself out of bed, doing the finger movements for her guns. Where the hell was she? A… a classy hotel room? She blinked. …no guns. She looked down. No trench coat wherethefuckwashertrenchcoat! …her brain caught up with her ears. Gentleman friend?

“Ms. Williams?” The …busboy? Was starting to sound a little worried about her. “Are you all right in there? You were lookin’ pretty bad when he brought you in… did you rest up okay, or do you think you need a doctor, getting so exhausted?”

“Your high-class accent’s slipping.”

“…What?”

“Nothing.” She shook her head, though he wasn’t in the room to see it. “As I was unconscious when I was brought in, could you tell me who brought me in?” And who had replaced her beat-up body armor and trench coat with a decent dress.

“I’m sorry, Ms. Williams.” She’d still got it. She could hear the respect to an upper-class woman kick in as he spoke. “I didn’t catch his name. A foreigner? He brought you here after you exhausted yourself dancing all night at the costume party, and left money to pay for the room and your meals and a lady’s maid and so on for the next week so you could rest up before going home?”

“Ah. I think I know who it was now. And the lady’s maid was the one who took… changed me out of my costume?” She looked around. Stay calm.

“Yes, of course Ma’am.”

“Do you still have what is left of it? It was borrowed.” Her eyes lighted on a red folded square on a side table. “Ah, found it. Dinner, you said?” Rummaging for her weapons. Ah. Thank… whatever.

“Yes, room service will bring it up in half an hour if you order now, Ma’am.”

“Steak. Medium rare, I’ll trust the chef on the rest of the meal. But no wine, thank you. Do you know where the gentleman can be reached? I’d like to thank him.” The guns seemed to not be tampered with…

“The Manager told me to tell you he left a note on the dresser, Ma’am.”

“Thank you. That will be all.”

“You’re welcome, Ma’am.” Footsteps receding down the hall.

She looked at the dresser, tapping her fingers on her gun.

She walked over and picked up the note.

Dear Ms. Williams, or Eva, as you prefer,

My apologies for observing you unawares, but as I said in our conversation over tea, I find myself in need of information about the patterns of demonic attacks and hunter methods of response, and awareness of observation affects what is observed.

I hope that what small amount of assistance I provided lessens your justified ill feelings at the rudeness of ‘spying on’ you. However, as it is more likely my inaction than my actions that have offended you, I can offer no excuse for my not acting to assist in saving other lives, save that which came up again during our discussion on the movie you so enjoyed.

Despite my realization that human lives have meaning, I still find the lives of the whole that might be saved by this information more valuable than the few. You find that callous of me, but as I said before I would rather a few innocents die than those valuable to mankind as a whole.

Although… I do admit that there is a difference of feeling between moral contemplations and actually seeing the demise of innocents, as it seems you do daily, risking your life to prevent. I found this… most illuminating.

I extend my thanks, and before you say, ‘for what?’ or something along those lines, as you did nothing you would not normally do, that is what I wish to thank you for, on behalf of those who do not know to thank you.

Sincerely, Sir von Schwärzung, or Lucian, if we are still on a first name basis.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The tax collector is the club treasurer, the Pharisee the Preacher, the Samaritan Sparda.
> 
> The ‘victim’ is humanity.
> 
> The listener is you the reader.
> 
> And that makes Eva, our narrator…
> 
> Isn’t heresy fun?
> 
> Also: “What you have done for the least of these, this you have done for me.”
> 
> And, by Alexander Pope: “Who sees with equal eye, as God of all/A hero perish or a sparrow fall.”
> 
> Also, Sparda… helped out just a little during the first 2 incidents. Watch for what Eva think is unusual.


	4. Seasonal

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Nor do I own the Byrd's song 'Turn, Turn, Turn.'

Eva hummed to herself as she set up the new neon sign for her new shop. If you could really call it a shop, out here in the middle of the deserted ghetto. It was practically impossible to find anyone crazy enough to rent to her, but she’d used her connections to find someone really desperate.

A slum lord who’d been losing money for ages had had his last place moved into by a tough bunch of thugs he hadn’t been able to kick out. Dealing and taking advantage of the new generation of hipsters, the ones the old-timers called hippies out of contempt. Coming out here looking for peace and a high, getting eternal peace or just held up. Kids these days…

In a flash, she had a gun out and pointed behind her, firing a warning shot at the idiot trying to sneak around another of the decaying old brownstones. “Make like a tree and leave or you’ll be leaving this life! This is my roost now!”

She heard a knife clatter to the ground as the idiot who’d thought he could take her fled. Kids these days. Thinking he could off a Hunter and get his rocks off? Laughable. Just because she was a woman… male chauvinist pigs. One of these days, someone’d off him. Not today, it seemed.

What was the city coming to, that a slum lord couldn’t get the muscle to run off idiots like that? Whole world going soft… She finished adjusting the sign and sauntered over. Cheap knife. She pocketed it. Every little bit helps…

The shop was about set up, though. She’d had to do a few repairs to the masonry, but it should hold up until it blew up.

She heard someone else picking their way through the rubble, and acted natural. Another hunter or a gangster? Most people would be slipping as the stones slid under them. She picked up one of the stones she’d been using to mark the borders and tossed it idly as she inspected her new herb garden. Time to show off…

She tossed the rock, hearing it ricochet of the smoothest wall left and land a few feet away from the visitor. She whirled around, pointing her guns at them with the safeties on.

A fraction of a second later, the safeties clicked off. “You.”

Okay. She’d sewn different spells into her trenchcoat, she’d repaired the guns after the bullets had been hit into them, she had weapons out this time, she’d managed to replace 4 yellow orbs, if she got the herb bed between them that should at least slow him down, and she could maybe tear them out of the ground and toss them at him… but she was still screwed if he wanted to start something and why was he carrying a plant?

“Good morning, Ms. Williams.” He bowed gracefully.

She holstered her guns. Not putting them back in the space time pockets in her trenchcoat, not when he could probably just do whatever he’d done to lock them again. “You might as well just start calling me Eva. I’d say saving my life twice puts us on a first-name basis.”

He laughed. “Indeed. In any case, Eva, I thought a house-warming gift was in order.” He indicated the plant.

“Thank you. Just a sec.” She reached into a pocket (at least this one still worked), pulled out a bill roll, and started peeling off twenties. “Here you go.” She held out a stack to him, putting the rest back in her pocket.

He shook his head. “I couldn’t possibly. I understand that you would not want to be indebted to me, but that is more than the hotel and the tea combined.”

He’d counted? She’d flipped through those bills damn fast… stupid. A. incredibly powerful inhuman, B. he owned a bank. Of course he was able to count them.

She rolled her eyes. “Look. It’s not that I don’t want to owe you because you’re a devil. I owe you my life, hell, the whole human race owes you, and a few hundred isn’t going to balance the books. But I pay my own way.” She shook the money. “You take the greenbacks, I’ll take the mandrake, okay?” A demon, giving a hunter a plant used in exorcisms and wards.

She’d say, what is the world coming to? But he’d been doing this for two thousand years. Even though he was very different than the character in the movie she’d gone to see with her friends on her birthday, and kept coming back to the theatre whenever she could while it was being shown…

He bowed. “As you wish… Eva.” Still that hesitance about using her name. But, then, how many hunters would be willing to be on a first name basis with any devil, even this one?

Oh come on. She told herself. He’s had a hundred chances to kill you. Instead, he saves you and gives you things.

She walked forward, took the plant, and backed up a little. See? Still got all your arms and legs. And now you’ve got a mandrake plant.

Which crashed to the ground a second later as she grabbed her guns and they both took off running at the roar.

A Phantom. She fucking hated Phantoms. For one thing, who came up with the name? They were damn big, damn solid very visible things. Made out of goddamn lava. Didn’t the word phantom imply see through and not solid?

They also melted the buildings around them (hell to cover up), and even with the protection spells on her trenchcoat she was sweating like a pig. Good thing the blue orb’s healing replaced the water, or she’d dye of dehydration. What a way to go.

Shit. That building was the one piece of new construction in the area, they were still building it, and it had just crashed to the ground. Nice pick of a thing to hide behind while spellcasting, Eva. She took off running again, one hand firing the sub-machine gun behind her, the other doing the finger movements to keep the spell from being cancelled even though she’d been interrupted in the middle. She rolled behind the stub of a knocked-over wall and resumed the spell as Sparda distracted it.

Man, the guy could fight. She’d been impressed the first time she’d seen him, but hunters didn’t do melee, so she didn’t have much experience to judge by. She’d though he was an amateur with a few tricks.

The long Japanese sword was flashing red-orange with reflected light from the demon, blurring in the air as he thrusted and slashed faster than she could make out, jumping to dodge a claw and landing on top of it, attacking the tail, as she finished the spell and threw the supercharged C4 block into its mouth, using the confusion of the blast and a smoke grenade she’d thrown with it to run forward and toss a few land mines in the area around it, before running away again and starting another spell. Sparda’d jumped out of the way. Good.

Normally, the damn thing could stick its head in the ground and call the dead as pillars of hellfire, so you had to keep dodging while spellcasting, but Sparda was keeping it too busy to do that. Normally, killing a Phantom, one of hell’s lieutenants, took forever if you were good enough to kill it at all, but with the two of them, she thought this would wrap up in another few minutes.

It was roaring at Sparda as he leapt 40 feet into the air and kept himself up with magic and the recoil from those guns. Man, she’d kill for guns like those… Probably something along the lines of traitor, she could read their language and understand it a little, but the thing was roaring so much it was hard to make out. In pain.

She grinned, tossed the enhanced explosive and smoke grenade combo again, and rushed forward, sowing the ground with the land mines again. It stepped on a few as it tried to rush after her, before Sparda placed himself between them and blocked its advance, making it back up and step on more as it tried to retreat.

What the hell was going on? Why would a Phantom show up in broad daylight? Don’t think about it now, get distracted and mess up the finger patterns and you’ll have to do the whole damn spell all over again.

Why did he fight with a katana and guns? Those were normal weapons, human weapons. She’d have expected, she didn’t know, something glowy with spikes or something. A broadsword, maybe… idiot, he used his sword to seal the portal between the worlds. Or… that’s what the legend said, but how much of the legend was fact?

She ran forward to toss them at it, and shit. It was waiting for it, hit them back at her with its tail. She dived for cover, then heard the bang. She poked her head up out of the low ditch and Sparda saluted, sheathing his katana and using the guns again. He’d hit them back at it with the katana? That fast?

Stupid girl. This was the legendary dark knight Sparda, after all. She ran for new cover as shots rang out, already beginning the new spell.

Maybe he used human weapons so hunters wouldn’t be able to spot right away he was a devil? She hadn’t known until she’d see his shadow…

Careful, don’t trip on any of the flaming rubble. You’d probably survive, with him here, but you’d still look like an idiot.

And she almost tripped on a couple of crying kids, teens, really, crouched in what was left of a stairwell. … shit. If the Phantom knew they were here, it’d come over to eat their souls, and they’d get fried to a crisp no matter what she did. Unless…

You can’t take the heat, get out of hell’s kitchen. She tossed her trenchcoat over them. “Run. Fast!” They cowered. Stupid sheep… “Keep the trenchcoat on you and run!” She pointed her gun at them.

It was really amazing, she thought as they scrambled away, arms wrapped around each other, how people would just stop and stare at something really dangerous but run away from a little bitty thing like a gun used as a token threat.

Don’t think, just do. Where were the cooling spell components… thank god for belt pouches. Those kids had just walked off with half her armory.

There we go. She activated it and ran back to the battle. Sparda raised an eyebrow as she waved her arms at him instead of throwing things. She hoped he knew the hunter signs for civilians running.

He started herding it in the opposite direction as she ran for cover again.

…ow. A brick fell on her head. Damn thing, jumping all over the place like an earthquake. How much did it weigh? …and she hadn’t got injured yet this battle. She’d still have all her orbs full if it weren’t for the heat. Who knew? …and shit, she only had one more vial…

And the roaring reached a crescendo and stopped. She looked up to see Sparda sheathing his Katana again, beside a pool of lava, quickly cooling.

But not quickly enough. She fanned herself as she walked over. The battle was over, the enemy had fallen, no point in wasting a spell.

The souls of the demon’s victims hovered over the pool, clutching the last fragments of their life force and yielding it to her as she stood at the edge. Sparda hadn’t taken it? But then, she hadn’t seen him get hit once.

She looked at the red orbs in the pool of lava and sighed. Have to wait until it cooled and then chip the damn things out… but Sparda picked them up, brushed the lava off, and handed them to her when they cooled.

She nodded thanks. “Thanks for helping out.” And wasn’t that the obvious statement of the year? Those kids would definitely be dead by now if he hadn’t been here, and a bunch more people.

He looked at her for a moment. “You’re welcome.” Probably not used to getting thanks from hunters, either. She grinned, and started to say something along the lines of welcome to what? When she came down from the combat high and the whimpering, crying and screaming came to her attention.

As she tore up bandages from the pockets in the trenchcoat she’d gotten back and dispensed burn ointment and sew up a few wounds, he looked for survivors, pulling them out of the rubble and bringing them over to her. The thermos of tea got passed around, and when it started to get dark he threw one of his guns up into the air, and it turned into a hawk that glowed with a fair approximation of sunlight. So that was what had illuminated the boy under the streetlight that night. And she’d been right, that wasn’t a flare bullet. She remembered when she’d looked at his guns the first time they’d met. Luce and Umbra, huh? Light and darkness. Probably some meaning to it, but she’d figure it out when this was over.

There’d been a party going on, in a basement with squatters. They were wearing high heels, dolled-up girls now clutching broken bones, mourning the ones with their heads crushed open, or that they’d never walk again.

Yellow Orbs. She almost wanted to bring them back to life. But they they’d be tainted, evil and psychopathic and insane without the proper preparations, and there was never enough healing energy. Her blue orbs wouldn’t fix all of this, and then what would happen the next time? More and more hunters were being attacked, she’d heard on the grapevine… damnit, she’d thought a deserted place like this would be, well, deserted! But she had to stay near the city, to get where she was needed quick enough, even on a street-illegal motorcycle.

There was a war on, a much bigger one than the one half the world away, one all over the world.

But what else was new? She hummed cheerfully as she worked. Give the illusion of normalcy. Like Sparda’s tea… the world was made up, for most people, of thousands of little rituals. Work got you out of bed, you stopped for lunch at the same few places, ordered the same few things, read the paper and ate bread and jam and got the kids to school and scrubbed the floor but a lot of the floors were melted through… and what was Sparda carrying, wrapped in his coat?

Oh. No. Oh no.

And she shouldn’t have snatched the baby away from him, she didn’t want to him to think she hated him, but… the baby was covered in blood, and crying angrily. It couldn’t be more than a few hours old, if that, where was… his, mother?

Sparda shook his head sadly.

Eva gave it to the girls, hopefully looking after it would give them something to do, and when she looked at them again it seemed to work.

When she had time to look at them again.

The firefighters arrived, and put out the last of the blazes, and the blankets she and Sparda had salvaged were replaced with more, cleaner ones, and they left to avoid the reporters as medical people arrived a few minutes later.

She looked at what was left of her shop, ash floating down gently on it, and sighed. At least she hadn’t moved in the explosives and breakables yet, and her bike was safe in the garage.

Sparda silently helped her move the rubble out of the way as she collected what was left of her belongings. Finally she went over to the herb garden, to harvest everything that was left, and while she was picking through it he came up to her again.

He held the mandrake out to her when she turned around. “I think it will be fine when it is repotted.”

Small consolation, right now. “It’s fine. I kept telling them it would be fine, they would be fine. But… that one’s gone, but hell is full of the damned things: there’s no guarantee they won’t be back tomorrow, or the next day…”

“I am sorry.” Sparda bowed his head.

“Not your fault. Actually, kinda the opposite.” She smiled wryly at the poor excuse for a joke. It was getting darker and darker, and probably colder as it was still winter, but she didn’t feel it with her trenchcoat wrapped around her.

But they had been shivering. She hugged her arms to herself.

“But even so… it is a horrible way for our worlds to be.” He shook his head sadly.

She shrugged. “The way it is.”

“But it should not be that way. And do not tell me of hopeless causes.” A smile.

She snorted. “I’m not that stupid. But you can take on armies. Us?” She shrugged. “I’d still be fighting or dead, right now, if you weren’t here. Thank you.”

“No need.” He shook his head.

“I’m still thankful.” She laughed, just a little, then sobered up, looking away. “Thank you.”

“You were a help as well. Consider any debt you feel you owe paid.” He shrugged, clearly uncomfortable.

She couldn’t hurt him, but she could make him uncomfortable when she didn’t want to. Murphy’s enforcers were in tip-top form today. She laughed again, just for a second. “I wasn’t much of a help. You were saving me, not me you. Not used to that.”

Sparda stayed silent.

“I suppose I could call it even if I saved your life, like with other hunters a few times, but anything that could scratch you would chew me up and spit me out. And you’ve saved the human race Go… goodness only knows how many times. And you’re this uncomfortable with me thanking you, even?” She turned to look at him. “We haven’t repaid you. I doubt we could ever repay you, and it looks like we aren’t even trying. I mean, don’t you miss your home? You’re here,” she waves her arms, indicating the whole Realm of Light, “and you’re family’s back there, everything and everyone you know is back there. You’ve been here for two thousand years. Don’t you ever get lonely?”

“I have had human friends…” he started to say.

“But how many of them have been willing to call you friend? To even thank you? To acknowledge that they owe you, even though you’re a demon. Sure,” she waved again, “there’s the legend. You have thousands of people all over the world who know who you are, at least in theory. Know the legend, read the books, seen the movie, but what about the ones who know who you are? Know who Sir Lucian Thaddeus von Schwärzung really is? How many of them don’t look at you with fear, with loathing for what you are? Even me!” She pointed at herself. “Even I… I’m trying to get along you, I owe you and you seem like a really nice guy and you’ve had tons of chances to kill me and you haven’t, but I still point my guns at you! How can you stand us?!”

“There have been, and are, those who call me friend, who thank me. But you are correct, even they fear and hate. Because they, like you, have learned fear, learned hate, because of what my kind have done. Not all of us are like Mundus: more than I have helped you, but you know not of them. Because to you, we have been the terrors in the night.” He shrugged. “It is understandable.”

“Not the way it should be.” She muttered. “And don’t tell me it can be changed. People are all talking about changing the world now, but it’s not going to change. I’m not you, I can’t fight armies, I certainly can’t fight the prejudices of the whole world. There’s nothing I can do to repay you.”

He shrugged. “I don’t care.”

She stared at him. “How can you not? We save us, and we treat you like dirt, like worse than dirt.”

He shrugged again. “If I cared even what my own kind thought of me, I would probably be ruling a good portion of Africa, or possibly Australia, now.”

She nodded, smiling wryly. “Good point.” Really, what had she been thinking? Trying to talk him out of saving her, saving humanity? She should get her head checked. Maybe the heat had gotten to her, or something.

Sparda watched her stare unseeingly at the ruins for a while, before speaking up. “Excuse me?”

“Yeah?” she said tiredly.

“Do you have a place to spend the night?” He was clearly worried about offending her with the question. It was sort of funny, sort of sad, sort of sweet. She smiled.

“You can put me up at a hotel again if you want. I mean, for all we know, that thing might have been after you instead of me. But I’m going to pay you back. I’m only asking you,” she pointed at him for emphasis, “because you’re a damn sight more likely than me to be able to get a decent hotel room on no notice. What time is it?”

He looked to the right. “Almost dawn.” There was already a slight lightening of the sky.

She stared at it. “Shit. I’ve been up for only 36 hours. I shouldn’t be this loopy.”

Sparda wisely stayed quiet.

“Do you have any tea left?” She stuck her hand out in his direction.

He nodded, taking out the thermos. “It’s enchanted.”

“I thought so.” She said, turning to him to take it.


	5. Gentleman

Eva paused in unpacking. Why was she putting everything into drawers and closets all neatly? It wasn’t like she would be staying long. Just until she saved up for a new shop. Or Sparda decided he didn’t want to be imposed on any longer and indicated she had better leave.

 

Really, she didn’t know why he was letting her sort of/almost stay with him. The hotel he was staying at had miraculously had an empty grand suite next to his. She would have been perfectly happy with an ordinary room, the sort with a bed and a dresser and a bathroom and no room for anything else.

 

And really, it would be better to keep everything in the bags she had stuffed those of her belongings that had survived the Phantom’s attack and she hadn’t wanted to put in storage into. The maids probably wouldn’t peek in there. The guns and so on would definitely attract attention.

 

The hotel detective was in the pay of the mob and allowed illicit gambling to go on under his nose. She didn’t have to worry about him, but some light fingered cleaner… No, this was a respectable establishment. The kind of place without roaches. The sort of place someone like Sparda pretended to be stayed at.

 

The sort of place someone like Ritter (German for Sir) Lucian Thaddeus von Schwärzung stayed at. The sort of place someone like Dolores Morgan stayed at, with proper chaperonage of course. Not the sort of dive Eva Williams stayed at.

 

It was improper to leave things in bags. Especially messy bags that didn’t even qualify as luggage. She should at least pretend to be somewhat proper, for the sake of his reputation. Even if people would probably assume they were sleeping together.

 

Servants gossiped, and she discovered she still actually cared if they gossiped about her. About unpacking, for goodness’ sake. She shook her head and stopped.

 

It was the early afternoon. Too late to go to sleep, too early to go on the mission she’d already had lined up for tonight. She’d already checked over her equipment.

 

She decided to go bug Sparda.

 

If they were going to be living in close proximity for any amount of time, it was vital to find out exactly how much she could bug him. She bugged people. Sparda was all polite and restrained (he’d had who knew how many millennia of practice at not killing annoying people), but it would be a bad thing, a very bad thing for him to kill her.

 

Well, that was obvious. He’d saved her life a few times, he probably wouldn’t want to waste the effort, but he was a demon after all.

 

That still smarted, needing to be saved. Damsel in distress and knight. All that stereotypical helpless female nonsense. Sheesh.

 

She looked thoughtfully at the connecting door between their suites and decided to barge in without knocking. “Hello?” she called out, entering the big sitting room.

 

“Here, Ms. Williams.” He gracefully raised his hand, sitting in an armchair with a book.

 

The scabbard of his big sword was leaning against the side of the chair, and she could see the holsters for his twin handguns were still at his sides. “People don’t comment about you carrying around weapons all the time? You had them at the tea, too.” She threw herself down into a chair facing his. Comfy.

 

“I am considered eccentric, but harmless. If I were less wealthy, it would perhaps be commented on, but not in these circles. As it is, it is unusual for me to be armed myself instead of having armed bodyguards, but no more.” He shrugged.

 

She’d used to be frightened of her father’s bodyguards and their guns. How different things were now. “You, harmless.” She snorted. However, here she was, up close and she didn’t really feel too threatened. He would have just let her die if he wanted her dead. She squinted. “Is that a… a golden skull?” It was horned and had a sapphire on the forehead. It was sitting right at the bottom of the lace thing on his chest, she couldn’t remember the name of the article of clothing.

 

“A broach in the shape of one, yes. Something else few people notice. Like the shadow.” He smiled. “It was a gift.”

 

“Noticed the shadow.” She’d still been in battle mode at the time, the state where you noticed everything because you had to notice everything to survive. “Didn’t see the skull.”

 

“It was dark at the time. I’m amazed you noticed the shadow. The flickering torches should have scrambled it enough… I was hoping to avoid a fight with you.”

 

“Well, we can’t call what we had a _fight_. It would have been a slaughter.” Helpless. Not even able to reach her weapons.

 

“It could have been a slaughter of innocents, if you had not been careful with your weapons. It was good of you to get them away first.”

 

“Well.” Eva shrugged. “Didn’t want you to hide behind them.”

 

Sparda looked amused.

 

“Well, I didn’t know you then.” Did she know him now? “What are you reading?”

 

“Dante’s _The Divine Comedy._ A favorite.” He held out a well-thumbed leather bound copy.

 

“Is it accurate?”

 

“Not at all. Not that it was meant to be. It is more a tale of a personal journey than a metaphysical one.” He closed the book. “Is there a reason you came here?”

 

“Not much of a reason. But then, it wasn’t much of a walk. I’m right next door, you know. It wasn’t even locked.” Though she would take care to lock it from her side. “Aren’t you worried I’ll rig your bed to explode while you’re asleep?”

 

He raised an eyebrow. “Ms. Williams, I am a living legend. I have not stayed that way by being _that_ easy to kill. Have no fear on my account. Nor on yours. I swore a long time ago not to kill humans.”

 

She raised an eyebrow. “What? Not one in two thousand years?”

 

“Well, sorcerers who have become part-demon do not count.”

 

“I’d agree with you there.” She wanted to spit in contempt.

 

The room was paneled in oak and upholstered in rich red fabric. He look at home here. He looked at home with a book in his hand. He was all elegance and refinement and made her feel utterly inadequate. Women were supposed to be the beautiful, civilized ones.

 

Which was a sexist stereotype, but no one raised in a society could be perfectly uncontaminated by its views. And since there _was_ a double standard, she wanted to exploit it. “Are you just looking after me because I’m a woman.”

 

He raised an eyebrow. “Hardly.”

 

“Why are you, then?”

 

“Come now, you are a Hunter. You must know that demons find weakness… disgusting is the appropriate word, I think. Might makes right: it is our law. However, we have minds and free will just as you do. One can choose, as I have, to tolerate weakness. Protect humanity when our ways say you _should_ be conquered. However, there is a difference between tolerance and embracing something. If you were the weak creature you imply I think you are, I would have aided you then, but I would hardly spend unnecessary time with you.” True, she could tell. But utterly cold-blooded. Underneath the civilized exterior, under the kindness, he was still a demon. She had to remember that.

 

“I _am_ weak. I have been utterly helpless on several occasions around you. Not something I make a habit of.” She frowned at the memory.

 

“True, by my standards you are weak. But then, by my standards,” a private smile, “most _demons_ are weak, let alone humans. I have seen you fight. You would have most likely defeated that Phantom even if I had not been there.”

 

She shrugged. “One screw up, and I would have been dead.”

 

“I doubt you would have made a mistake of that nature.” He nodded in respect. “You are, forgive me, a human woman. The physically weaker gender of a weak species. Yet, despite that, you have gained strength through your own efforts, as other Hunters have. I find that admirable. Worth my time to foster.”

 

“So you want to have strong people, people you can tolerate, around you as an antidote to having to make yourself not kill so many idiots.”

 

“Hmm, I would not put it that way. Although I hope you will be a diverting companion.” A smile. “Have you read _The Divine Comedy_?”

 

She certainly wasn’t going to say “In the original, I had tutors.” But then, he already knew who her family was. She tried to keep people from finding out. Hostages were a bad thing. “Yes.”

 

“What did you think of it?”

 

“To be honest, I liked the pulp magazine stories better, when I could get them. Especially the science fiction and mysteries. I only liked the _Comedy_ for the descriptions of demons. Remember I said I was a fangirl of that movie about you?” She grinned, then sobered. “Of course, that was before I knew about real demons.” Looking around, she added, “I’m suddenly thirsty. Is there anything to drink? Besides tea. You always have tea.”

 

“There is a pitcher of water over there.” He gestured.

 

Eva stood up. “You’re not going to offer to fetch it for me? That would be the gentlemanly thing to do.” She walked over and poured herself a glass, drinking it down in one shot and filling it up again.

 

Sparda looked amused. “I would not want you to call me a sexist pig.”

 

“Male chauvinist pig is what I would say,” she corrected him, coming back with the glass.

 

“I am certainly not a pig, although I could assume the shape of one as easily as a human. And male? I am an entirely different species. It amuses me that most stories about other worlds picture the inhabitants as almost perfect replicas of humans, or humans in strange costumes.”

 

“That’s right, demons are nothing like humans.” She took a sip of the water. “What was it like there? Do you miss it? Do you have parents? A family?”

 

“Parents, yes.” He nodded. “You justify my opinion of you.”

 

“Huh?”

 

“It is amazing how few in two thousand years have asked questions like that. You are a most uncommon human. You draw strength from your hate yet are able to rise above it.”

 

She shrugged. “Don’t give me too much credit.” She looked at her watch. “Damn, I need to go. Ferino, he’s one of my agents, found me a job. I need to earn a ton of money for another shop, although I’ve got him looking for one too.”

 

“It would be easier to save up if you did not insist on paying for your accommodations,” he pointed out.

 

“That’s not negotiable.” She shook her head.

 

“As you will, then.” He opened up his book to the page he had been at before.

 

She felt like she had been dismissed from the presence of a king. He just had that aura, that made people respect him. Revere him. So she wanted to say something snappy to indicate that she would leave when she damn well felt like it. “See you for breakfast?”

 

“I have a meeting at 10am. Any time before 9 would be fine.” He looked interested.

 

“See you at 7, then. Nine is bedtime.” She made a show of checking her gun in its holster. “See you.” _Now_ she left.

 

Ferino was a young punk, but he kept his nose to the ground. Often brought her jobs first, for a fee from the client.

 

This time it was something in a fish warehouse. There had been weird noises for weeks, catches had turned out to not be as big as they had been when they were put there, and finally a worker had disappeared and his bones had turned up buried inside a pile of ice.

 

She’d turned on the floodlights first thing when she got there. Then something had started taking out the ones on the opposite side of the warehouse from her. She’d headed that way, but it must have gone by on the other side.

 

The ones where she had been went dark. She could hear the glass shattering. Some sort of ranged attack.

 

She pulled out flares from her coat and started dropping them behind her. Her contact lenses had night vision spells built in, but it would be nice if it snuffed out the flares. That would give her a way to track where it was.

 

Sure enough, she saw one behind her go out.

 

The fizzing of the flares blocked out the sound of footsteps. That included hers. Her coat’s enchantments would block her scent.

 

All she had to do was stay calm so it wouldn’t sense any fear. Piece of cake.

 

She was stalking something through a huge, echoing warehouse. Sometimes she heard soft sounds over the fizzing. Sounds like… fish sliding against each other all at once. .

 

Coming closer.

 

It was jumping from the top of one pile of fish to another. Clever. But then, they were all sentient. Almost as smart as humans. Some were smarter.

 

The last thump had been three piles ahead of her, and one to the right.

 

She tossed the grenades.

 

She heard a pained sound like nothing on earth, a cross between a soprano scream and a howl as she quickly pulled herself up on top of one of the piles.

 

It looked sort of like a wolf. Only made out of blued steel.

 

She tossed the other grenade. It snapped it out of the air.

 

Big mistake.

 

Her guns quickly finished it off. Piece of cake.

 

The air was filled with wet sliding sounds as the piles of fish, destabilized by the explosions, spilled down onto the floor.

 

And then another sound.

 

* * *

 

 

She whirled, her guns pointing almost straight up.

 

Then she holstered them again. “Sparda. I thought I told you not to follow me.”

 

“Actually,” he spoke from the rafters. “You said no such thing.”

 

“I didn’t?” She hadn’t. “Well, I’m saying it now.” 

 

“I did say part of my mission here was to observe a human hunter in combat.” He lightly jumped down what was easily twenty feet to the roof of an overseer’s hut inside the main building.

 

“I’m not giving away trade secrets, ally or not.” She was ticked. “I’m grateful for the rescue that time but I wasn’t in any danger.”

 

“No, not from something like that,” he agreed.

 

“So scram.” She pointed. “I don’t want _you_ getting paid for this.”

 

“No, it was all your work.”

 

She spat. It landed on one of the fish. “You’re a _man_.”

 

“Seemingly. I will go.” He vanished into thin air. So he was one of the ones that could teleport. Good to know.

 

Why was it good to know? Did she really want to know yet _another_ reason she was screwed if she tried to fight him? She shrugged and made her way through the fish.

 

The pay should last her about twenty days. Damn, but she needed to buy more ammo soon… she would have to save up for that before she could for the shop.

 

It was always one thing after another. A hunter was always running out of _something_. Good thing she’d just bought more grenades but they hadn’t been delivered to her shop. Now, that explosion might have taken out the Phantom.

 

He’d been sitting up there in the shadows the whole time. Looking all pretty and pristine and with weapons far superior to hers. He could have killed it in a second.

 

He’d let her kill it. He hadn’t stepped in to rescue her.

 

She felt oddly flattered that he had bothered watching. Though it was creepy. Seriously creepy, she had a devil stalker, and she was living right next to the guy. Locks were useless if he could teleport.

 

He’d probably just been bored with the book.

 

Thing was, she could run, but where could she run to that he couldn’t track her down? No point in being afraid, she was screwed if he wanted to do anything. Being scared wouldn’t make things any better. It might make things worse. She’d make herself look weak by being scared, and that would lose her that strange respect he seemed to have for her.

 

Besides, legend or no legend she didn’t want to back down. She’d lose face.

 

He was a puzzle, too. She never could resist puzzles. Exactly _why_ had he decided to help humanity? He had apparently been very high ranking in Mundus’ forces, he would have been in for a cut of the pie, right?

 

He’d had status, probably wealth in whatever form devils prized: red orbs, right, he was strong and they worshipped strength.

 

Probably had demonic fangirls way before the movie came out.

 

And he gave all that up.

 

What did he get?

 

Well, he clearly had prettymuch everything humans valued. Money, lands, title, he was a hero. Not that he could come out and _say_ he was a hero. He’d either be laughed at or people like her would try to kill him.

 

She headed back to the hotel after she got paid. When she was in an alley away from people who would think she was nuts, she called out, “Hello? You there?”

 

No answer.

 

Either he was hiding and watching her, or he’d done what she’d wanted him to and gone away.

 

He was an honorable devil, so she was pretty certain it was the latter.

 

She felt oddly disappointed.

 

Now she thought about it, it was oddly flattering, to have the greatest champion of humanity cheering her on.

 

She needed to go tell people where she was staying so they could find her if they had jobs.

 

But she wanted to go back to the hotel and annoy the hell out of him some more.  


	6. Elementary

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Besides the period stuff, I do have to wonder if this fic holds up almost nine years after I started it. Well, I'm x-posting for archiving purposes.

“They probably think I’m a loose woman.” Eva laughed, and took a sip of her coffee in the hotel’s lavish dining room. “Which is more accurate than they know.”

 

Sparda smiled, drinking his tea with the evening paper spread open. “Quite right. Tongues are wagging. And you’re quite right, you could be said to be one in a metaphorical sense. In the period of this costume,” he gestured to himself, “an unfettered woman, much less a working one, was considered illicit at best.”

 

“’My clients pay me, and I use my body for them for a night.’” Eva laughed again, then put down the empty coffee cup and started expertly carving up her beef Wellington. “I’ve told nosy people that to get them to quit asking me what my job is. None of their business.”

 

Sparda nodded, looking at the stock quotes. “It has been rather amusing. I seem to be more approachable now that they think I’m having an affair.”

 

“Makes you more human?” Eva laughed again. “Less of a saint and more concerned with earthly things? You seem to be at the top of the business world. License to print money, from what I hear.”

 

Sparda shook his head. “No, the days in which banks made their own currencies are long over. It’s amazing, how quickly the world went from regarding a steam engine as something only fit for a child’s toy to outdated machinery.” From machines being useless to demanding more and more advanced ones. “And how coins are being replaced with bills. The United States’ move to go off the gold standard… but then, that’s hardly your field. Forgive me for boring you.”

 

She waved dismissively while she finished chewing. “No, go on. You’re always fascinating to talk to. Child’s toy?”

 

“The Romans understood the principles of the steam engine, but regarded them as useless. The people making the decisions weren’t the ones doing the work, and, well.” Sparda shrugged. “Harvesting grain, weaving cloth, hazardous mining operations… those were what slaves were for.”

 

“Yeah, they enslaved prisoners of war, didn’t they.”

 

Sparda nodded approvingly. “Yes, it was quite different from the more modern, racially-based slavery. Slaves could be Roman, Celtic, Jewish, African… no difference. But still a cruel institution, at its roots. And one I highly disapprove of. Some buildings back then were practically mortared with blood.” Contempt.

 

“Was…” Eva looked for a word. She couldn’t say Mundus here, people around them were straining their ears to eavesdrop on them. They much look a sight. Regular crazies dressed up in impractical clothing, and eccentric old nobleman, rich as Midas, and one of those feminists. Probably an earth-mother worshipping Communist, like they all were. The thought made her grin despite the topic of the conversation. “Was the crazy Emperor… not Nero, the other one, behind a lot of that?”

 

“There were quite a few insane Roman Emperors, Caligula’s descendants.” A look of approval. He understood what she meant. “I’m sure you know Nero’s name meant black, and he certainly was black-hearted… but his worst excesses were exceeded by one of those who preceded him, the one who wanted to conquer all of Earth.”

 

She bet. She didn’t want to know what it was like to be ruled by demons. “Good thing he was deposed.”

 

Sparda nodded. She knew he meant ‘you’re welcome,’ though the onlookers would think it was a simple agreement.

 

Really, this deal of theirs was working out rather well. 

 

She insisted on covering her bills, even though he’d offered.

 

And he was handsome enough it was believable. Most of his colleagues considered him a dyed-in-the wool bachelor, practically a monk. His appearance (silver hair, indeterminate age), allowed him to go a long time between switching identities, but people would be suspicious of someone who records showed had been around for two hundred years.

 

She’d never thought of that. All the little details he must have to manage to live as an immortal. Birth certificates, funerals… she didn’t have any papers.

 

Didn’t want the enemies she’d made to track down her roots.

 

She didn’t want any more misfortune to befall her family.

 

The conversation took on a lighter note, and they exchanged barbs. Really, he was incredibly witty, especially for a banker. Who would have thought. She finished up her meal quickly, took her napkin off her lap and put the knife in the correct position to signal she was through.

 

“Leaving so soon?” he asked, a little disappointed, but then she was too. She really did like talking to him.

 

“Duty calls,” she replied, smiling. “Want to get together for breakfast?”

 

“That sounds wonderful, Eva. The usual place?”

 

“And as usual, we go Dutch,” she agreed, and stood.

 

He stood as well. “I have a meeting later, same sort of thing, I’m afraid.”

 

More demonic activity? Man, more and more bad news this week… staying with him, she was one of the few people not getting attacked.

 

Some hunters had been about to say maybe it was him, but Redgrave’d pointed out it was happening all over the world. _What_ was going on?

 

Something massive enough to get people all over the world talking to each other. And to him. A meeting… was he helping out another hunter?

 

“It never ends, does it?” She sighed.

 

He shrugged. “Evil triumphs when good men do nothing, Ms. Eva. And women.” He smiled.

 

He’d made the ‘and women’ an afterthought deliberately just to give her an opening for a comment. “Fighting for peace… maybe the Peace Corps isn’t as much of a silly, feel good project as it sounds. A few good women… and men. Have a good night.”

 

“You as well, I trust.” He bowed.

 

She grinned. “Bet on it.”

 

She sashayed up to her room first, unlocking the trunk the maids had been told to not touch and readying her equipment. Guns and bombs and a machete and more bombs and bullets were a girl’s best friend. Messengers of death.

 

She grinned, thinking of all the anti-war and anti-gun protesters nowadays. Give war a chance. It’s better than giving a slavery a chance. But she couldn’t reach out to them, couldn’t let people in her life. Kiss of death. She couldn’t afford hostages.

 

Sparda… she laughed at the thought of him as a hostage to lure her into battle. He’d have to be more careful about her, really. Not, she thought as she checked the timer on an interesting little package, that she had any intention of being a helpless victim. But be prepared, one never knew what the future would bring.

 

And tonight, she had been brought word of a nest of one of the insect types in an old warehouse. They’d moved on up from going after stray dogs and street people in alleys to being bold enough to spot someone and leave a witness. They weren’t stupid, demons. That meant they were pretty confident they had weight of numbers.

 

But then, they always tended to be overconfident where humans were concerned. She stuffed things in her pockets, locked the trunk with two keys, only one physical, and went to go get her motorcycle from the valet.

 

Servants doing things quickly and efficiently instead of doing her own chores and laundry. It had been hard to become self-reliant, so many things she hadn’t known how to do, and very easy to get used to this. She was almost dreading when Sparda went back to Switzerland and she had to scrub floors again because a maid was a potential hostage and/or spy.

 

Forget about all that. You’re on the mission now, she told herself.

 

Flying through dark city streets, her trusty trenchcoat keeping the wind from biting into her as she raced along. Now, this was more like it. Civilization was nice, but you wouldn’t want to live there all the time. Right?

 

She pushed open the doors of the bar where her client’s go-between was waiting, game face already set. She was having the time of her life today.

 

…and walked into a room full of Beelzebubs. Now, this was more like it. “Fire in the hole!” she yelled, and hit the dirt as she tossed a package in the air.

 

Kaboom!

 

Just enough to scorch the room, didn’t know where there were civilians and didn’t want to knock down any walls on top of people. She lunged back to her feet, pulling her guns out and taking out a few of the big green ones, who had survived. Her motorcycle goggles let her see through the smoke, and experienced ears picked up screaming over her own gunfire and the buzzing of the demons. She wished Sparda was here, he was good at finding survivors (probably could smell them)…

 

Tell her the idiot hadn’t picked a rondevu point only a block shy of the nest. Everyone knew Beelzebubs were attracted to alcohol! …well, to be fair, every hunter knew. They’d laugh about this later.

 

The place was coated in fire now, decades of spills in what was probably an old speakeasy soaked into the wood, the cacophony punctuated by bottles of whiskey and scotch boiling in their bottles before exploding, adding more fuel to the flames. Probably not good old vintages going to waste here…

 

They tried to split larvae at her, but the fire dried them out, weakening them so much it was child’s play to shake them off even before they managed to bite through her coat. Their poison wasn’t that strong, for demons, so she wasn’t that worried even if she did get bit. She’d helped take out a Phantom.

 

She tossed herbs on the flames around her, the smoke rising and choking them. She kept the goggles she wore while riding over her eyes and an enchanted cloth over her mouth. That smoke would hurt her almost as much as it hurt them, and she was more fragile. It was nice of him not to make an issue of it…

 

She swung a machete to cut down some big tough men held in place by strands as they cowered, almost as afraid of the fire-red figure striding through the smoke, thunder striking down the unholy creatures, as they were of the overgrown cockroaches. It was said their host-species would survive a nuclear holocaust. Well, they wouldn’t survive this one of natural flame.

 

She covered the civilians on their way out and dove back in as hands reached out to her to pull her back, you won’t survive, you’re not strong enough, man! …man?

 

Well, her hair was tucked under her coat (no sense in letting it burn off), and this wasn’t exactly a womanly thing to do, but she was rescuing sexist pigs!

 

Something to complain to him about. She laughed, and tried not to cough. Too hot.

 

Thank whatever she’d replaced all her cooling spells first thing. Can’t take the heat, get out of the kitchen. …my, how domestic, she’d have a cook fire next.

 

Burn, babies, burn! She laughed. And they screamed around her.

 

She heard gunshots behind her and turned with a grin, done already? But it was some idiot civilian trying to help.

 

She wondered if this was what she looked like to him… no, he respected her _because_ she had to work so hard to be a match for even weak ones like these…

 

Kaboom! The blast impaled one of them on a pole.

 

She wasn’t a weak woman. Even most hunters were male… whole world was sexist. It was sort of nice to run into someone who looked at her and saw a human instead of a woman, prejudice-wise. Not that he wasn’t good at overcoming it…

 

Fool turned and ran, out of ammo, and she covered him. Her contact? She’d better get paid for this.

 

That room wasn’t cheap, but what was her life worth to her? And the company couldn’t be beat and why was she thinking about him when she had a job to do?

 

Finally, all of them were out of the building and she really made the shack go to the ground. Had to roast all the larvae…

 

Now for the main nest. She walked in, guns blazing.

 

Sometimes… she felt like an avenging angel, bringing down fiery vengeance, wielding the power of life and death, and she laughed like she was as mad as they thought she was.

 

Sometimes, all she could do to a body kept alive far beyond what it should have endured was give it a mercy stroke and let them drown in sweet death. And their last breaths were a sigh of relief and she voiced the screams they could not anymore, voices gone after being trapped in their private hells on earth.

 

She cut the strands and they fell down and that was all the mercy she could give them.

 

And a funeral pyre.

 

God, she hated them. But not Sparda, he was different.

 

…and why was she thinking about him and why was there a smile on her lips that wasn’t a cruel one? She shook her head, and kept tossing grenades ahead of her.

 

Sewers. They always took refuge in the sewers. She hated sewers. She dropped the potion vials in the water and was grateful for the cloth that had shielded her from the smoke and now the stench.

 

She’d have to get the coat dry-cleaned again. Even magical fabric could only take so much damage before the warranty gave out. That meant three days without her best protection. Thank goodness she was staying with someone who could watch her back…

 

Dodge!

 

The rounds slamming into the flying blue one pushed it back out of slicing range. How had she been so distracted?!

 

Boom!

 

Why did she keep thinking about him?

 

Frantic gunfire, her hands retargeting after each fell, buzzing so loud she could hardly hear herself think.

 

She didn’t like what she was thinking. She wasn’t…

 

Oh no.

 

She’d like to think he’d cast some spell on her, she really would. That would be a nice, reasonable explanation, and make this nice and fixable. Get a counter spell.

 

Or, no… if Sparda had cast a spell on her, that would mean he wanted… and he would damn well get it. She wasn’t strong enough to fight him off. But why would he even bother with a spell?

 

Disable her weapons, get her unable to fight back (he’d done it before), and… she was fucked.

 

But she didn’t think he would do something like that, and that was why she was… letting herself care.

 

Damn it, she’d thought her heart had been ripped out of her chest a long time ago.

 

And a claw stabbed into the back of her leg.

 

Damn it! Damn it damn it damn it! Focus!

 

Don’t go all mushy! Kill them and get healing energy!

 

And then all the adults were dead, and she took her sweet time torching the larvae. The civilians were downing mugs of whatever brew was left.

 

She got paid. Enough for her to stay in that room for…

 

She should run.

 

He would track her down. Now that she thought about it… Hell. She’d been mooning over him this whole time and didn’t even realize it.

 

She’d never really grown up since seeing that stupid, inaccurate movie.

 

He’d fascinated her. And she’d fascinated him. Why hadn’t she realized it?

 

She didn’t think he’d realized it… no. He hadn’t. She had to trust him or she’d go mad. He could do anything he damn well wanted to do to her and she was helpless. All she had to rely on was his honor. That he cared for her.

 

He wouldn’t have let another hunter impose on him like she had, she’d seen him around others when five had shown up to handle an emergency. He didn’t hang around. Especially if they found out. Didn’t want to tempt them into trying to kill him, didn’t want trouble…

 

She made him uncomfortable. He’d tried to pull away, but came back, and she’d gone away and then followed him home and he seemed to be good at keeping her even when they hadn’t known they wanted to.

 

She just had to laugh. They were both so clueless.

 

She was so afraid.

 

They could smell fear.

 

And he was a predator, after all.

 

Oh hell, she didn’t know what to do. Damn her for caring, damn him for being so perfect, damn interesting conversations about history and psychology and just talking shop. Damn him for watching her back, and her for watching him back.

 

And it was about time for breakfast. She was starving.

 

She was such a fool. Such a goddamn fool.

 

She just had to laugh, as she walked through familiar streets after stashing her bike at the hotel. She hadn’t gone up to the room. It was late, anyways.

 

And he was late too. So she leaned against the brick wall in the alley next to the Mom and Pop waffle place and looked up at the sky, which wasn’t a ridiculous shade of blue. It was overcast, and quite possibly about to rain, and she was glad, it restored a little of her faith in normalcy. Made her feel a little safer, less like a plaything of Cupid or whatever.

 

Somebody up there really didn’t like her. If there was anybody up there. This wasn’t something that could possibly work out, even if he felt the same way which she felt he probably did and thought was probably impossible for a devil.

 

Look at how her parents had been, and they had had everything in common. Rich people from good families, grown up together… throwing vases, angry shouts and sound of fists hitting flesh…

 

Age differences (literally a fraction of his age), cultural differences (she’d read the Roman poets, not lived there), racial differences… they were just so not made for each other. This was absolutely, utterly impossible.

 

Not going to work out.

 

And he came in the opposite side of the alley, hesitant (it was always a bad sign when he was hesitant), and she rolled her eyes at the heavens. She’d just _known_ he would figure it out tonight too.

 

And she clenched her fists. Predator. Don’t go for weapons, don’t run, don’t let yourself be afraid… He was looking at her, and smiling apologetically, smiling understandingly, smiling at the joke the universe was playing on them.

 

She just _knew_ what he was thinking. When did she become a mind reader? When she’d spent every second the both of them could snatch out of two insanely busy schedules chatting together. Just… talking. And him showing her moves, and delicacies, and her taking him to out-of-the-way places like this and if he was human and had a soul she would have to say he was her soulmate.

 

He opened his mouth to say something and then closed it, shrugging. They both knew. She wondered if they could detect love as well as fear and hate. She wondered how he’d figured out he cared, and he did care, she had to believe it.

 

She had to run! Devil! Casting a spell on her!

 

She had to hold still! Devil! She didn’t stand a chance against him!

 

She had to say something! Her…friend! She must look like a complete idiot, standing her on the verge of panic, fists clenching and unclenching, covered in smoke stains and looking like she’d come from a war… her leg shifted. Godsdamnit, she was going to run.

 

Sparda raised a hand in a signal to stop and she froze. “I would _highly_ advise…” his voice was strained. She’d never heard it less than perfect. There was… almost a growl, almost a hiss, buried in it, just on the edge of hearing and she’d never been so scared in her entire life. He winced… he could feel that, couldn’t he.

 

She took deep breaths, and tried not to hyperventilate. “Not acting like prey. Gotcha.” She tried to smile.

 

He laughed, not a laugh of good humor but a laugh at the insanity of the realm of light and this… situation. What did he think of this situation?

 

She probably didn’t bear much resemblance to an eligible female devil. He looked like a rather elegible bachelor, but the form described in the texts she’d gotten from the Redgraves hadn’t. A mottled brown giant with dragonfly wings and horns, fangs and claws and spikes slick with crimson blood.

 

He hadn’t been very nice, before he’d decided to be nice. She realized suddenly she probably knew more about him than anyone had in centuries.

 

She realized she was jealous of anyone who had known more. There… hadn’t been others, had there? There weren’t in the records… she wanted to shoot them, if so.

 

Hell, she was lost.

 

She just couldn’t help but laugh. And he joined and what started out as desperate turned to graffawing, and she shook her head at him and he shrugged. “This can’t possibly end well.”

 

“I quite agree, Ms. Williams.”

 

“But I refuse to end up a corpse, or even worse spend the rest of my life pining away like a character in a bad novel. So… what do you say we pretend it can, until we manage to annoy the hell out of each other enough we can’t stand the sight of each other?”

 

He laughed. “Agreed, Ms. Williams.”

 

“Call me Eva.”

 

“Agreed, Eva.” He bowed.

 

“I’ve changed my mind. You can pay for breakfast.”


End file.
